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THE ACTS 



SAINT MARY MAGDALENE, 



THE ACTS 



^attit jHarp jHagtialetu 



CONSIDERED, IN A 



SEEIES OF DISCOUESES, 



AS ILLUSTRATING 



CERTAIN IMPORTANT POINTS OF DOCTRINE. 



HENRY STRETTON, M.A., 

S. MARY MAGDALENE HALL, OXFORD. 
PERPETUAL CURATE OF HIXON, DIOCESE OF LICHFIELD. 



"I fell into a contemplation of what had passed betwixt our Blessed Saviour ai 
that wonder of women and sinners and mourners Saint Mary Magdalene." 

Walton's Lives. 




LONDON: 

JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET, 
AND 78, NEW BOND STREET. 

MDCCCXLVIII. 



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d 

1 



TO 

THE HONOURABLE JOHN CHETWYND TALBOT, 

ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S COUNSEL, 
ATTORNEY-GENERAL TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES; ETC. ETC. 

BY WHOM 

THE TRUE MISSION OF LAYMEN IN THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 

IS FULLY REALIZED IN A 

DAILY DEVOTION OF HIMSELF AND OF HIS SUBSTANCE 

TO HER BEST INTERESTS, 

€I)te Volume 

IS, WITH PERMISSION, RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. 



H*3H 



PREFACE. 



These sermons are given to the public, partly be- 
cause the Author was persuaded to publish them at 
the repeated request of several persons who heard 
many of them delivered, and expressed a desire to 
have in their possession the whole connected series, 
and who entertained the belief that, if they appeared 
in print, they might promote the interests of piety 
and religion ; and partly because he himself was 
of opinion, that the delineation of so prominent a 
scriptural life as that of S. Mary Magdalene, espe- 
cially when viewed in combination with the passages 
concerning the penitent woman of the city and the 
sister of Martha and Lazarus and so forming one 
consistent character, (an attempt which he believes 
has not been made by any previous writer,) might be 
found both attractive and instructive ; and by means 
of the additional interest attaching to a connected 
narrative might render the lessons which he desired 



Vlll PREFACE. 

to convey more engaging, even to many to whom 
sermons ordinarily offer little attraction. 

The idea of the series was conceived by the 
Author when serving his first cure, in 1844, at S. 
John's, Westminster, and preparing discourses for 
the pulpit ; and was kept before his mind, he trusts, 
by the gracious Spirit of God, until it has gradually 
developed into the connected view of the scriptural 
details of S. Mary Magdalene's life furnished in the 
present volume. The sermons have undergone con- 
siderable amendments and additions since their com- 
position for the pulpit ; and as, besides this, two of 
them were never preached, they have, therefore, the 
less right to claim any interest from the several 
places of their delivery. Suffice it, therefore, gene- 
rally, to say that they were delivered before metro- 
politan congregations, in the years 1844, 1846, 
and in the present year. 

The passages in the Appendix have generally 
been added, to give the reader confidence in the 
Author's views ; which, however, were formed, 
for the most part, independently of them. The 
Author's conviction of the identity of Mary Mag- 
dalene and Mary sister of Lazarus sprang from a 
serious meditation and scriptural research on the 



PREFACE. IX 

subject, consequent on the strong assertion to that 
effect of a learned writer of the present day ; but 
he is glad to be able to adduce so much authority 
tending to confirm that conviction. 

It has been thought desirable, for obvious reasons, 
to furnish a translation of the Latin quotations in 
the Appendix from Lamy, &c. ; but the French lan- 
guage being now so common an acquirement, it was 
deemed best to leave the two or three passages in 
that language in their original form. 

It is due to those who, more than two years ago, 
requested the publication of this series, to say, 
that they would have made their appearance at a 
much earlier date, had not all the Author's disposa- 
ble time, during a period not unattended with the 
distracting cares of a frequent shifting of home and 
position, been devoted to another publication, which 
he considered of far greater importance than this 
work is likely to prove to the interests of the 
Church. 

Hixon, 

Feast of S. Andrew the Apostle, 1848. 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON I. 



Introductory Discourse. 
Saint Mary Magdalene described. 

S. Luke vii. 37. 

Page 

And behold a woman in the city, which was a sinner." . . 1 

SERMON II. 

The Influence of Evil Spirits. 

S. Luke viii. 2. 
Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils." . 21 

SERMON III. 

S. Mary Magdalene the Model of a Perfect 
Repentance. 

S. Luke vii. 3/, 38. 

And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when 
she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, 
brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at His feet 
behind Him weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, 
and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His 
feet, and anointed them with the ointment." . . 39 



Xll CONTENTS. 

SERMON TV. 

Jesus the Justifier of the Penitent. 

S. Luke vii. 4/. 

Page 
" Wlierefore her sins, which are many, are forgiven : for she 

loved much : but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth 
little." . . . . . . .57 

SERMON V. 
The active and contemplative lives. 

S. Luke x. 41, 42. 

" And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou 
art careful and troubled about many things ; but one thing is 
needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not 
be taken away from her." . . . . .75 



SERMON VI. 
Faith in the Church under sorrow. 

S. John xi. 32. 

Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw Him, she 
fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord, if Thou hadst 
been here my brother had not died." . . .89 



SERMON VII. 
Ointment no waste, but a good work. 

S. Matt. xxvi. 8, 9. 

But when His disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To 
what purpose is this waste ? for this ointment might have 
been sold for much, and given to the poor." . .107 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

SERMON VIII. 
Ointment an acceptable sacrifice. 

S. Matt. xxiv. 10. 

Page 
" When Jesus understood it, He said unto them, Why trouble 

ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon Me." 123 

SERMON IX. 

The Cross the type of Christianity. 

S. John xix. 25. 

" Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother, and 
His Mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas and Mary 
Magdalene." 143 

SERMON X. 

The graye of Christ a type of the Church's 
struggles. 

S. Matt, xxvii. 61. 

" And there was Mary Magdalene and the other Mary sitting over 

against the Sepulchre." . . . . .163 

SERMON XI. 

S. Mary Magdalene leader in the search for 
Christ. 

S. Matt, xxviii. 1. 

" Mary Magdalene and the other Mary." .... 187 

SERMON XII. 

Zeal in seeking Christ. 

S. Mark xvi. 2. 

" And very early in the morning, the first day of the week, they 

came unto the Sepulchre at the rising of the sun." . . 205 



XIV CONTENTS. 

SERMON XIII. 
Nearness to Christ a call for Reverence. 
S. John xx. 17. 

Page 

" Jesus said unto her, 'Touch Me not.' " . . . .227 

SERMON XIV. 

The Mission of Laymen in the Church. 

S. John xx. 17. 
" Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My 
Father, and your Father; and to My God and your 
God." . . . . . . .251 

SERMON XV. 
The Mission of Women in the Church. 

S. John xx, 17. 
"Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My 
Father, and your Father, and to My God and your 
God." 275 

SERMON XVI. 

The Mission of the Penitent in the Church. 

S. John xx. 17= 
"Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My 
Father, and your Father, and to My God and your 
God." 301 



Appendix ....... 327 



SERMON I. 



Jntroiuitorp Ufecourse. 



S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 



S. Luke vii. 37. 
And behold a woman in the city which was a sinner. 

There are few narratives in Holy Scripture which 
more effectually rivet the attention and call forth 
the deeper feelings of our nature, than that of the 
woman who anointed our Saviour with " very pre- 
cious ointment" and " wiped His Feet withher hair," 
the odour of whose sacred action was to diffuse it- 
self throughout the world in all times and places to 
which the Gospel should extend. We are seized 
with a kind of wonderment at the beauty, the bold- 
ness and originality (if we may so speak) of this 
woman's deed ; and we are left in just that degree 
of suspense and perplexity about much of her story 
which, leading us to dwell upon it and imagine much 
about it, serves all the more to heighten its interest 

B 



2 S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. [SERM. 

and to fix indelibly on our minds such incidents as 
have been preserved to us by the Holy Spirit. 

S. Luke speaks of " a woman in the city which 
was a sinner," words which, it must be confessed, 
convey to our ears sad and distasteful thoughts. 
S. John 5 moreover tells us that the woman who 
anointed our Saviour was Marv sister of Lazarus, 
and this is doubly distressing to us, and we say, " Can 
it be that she who chose the good part, one of that 
family which Jesus loved and so highly distin- 
guished, — Mary who is such a model of serene, un- 
perturbed, deep devotion, should ever have been so 
fearfully involved in sin, as seems to be implied in 
the words ' a woman in the city which was a sinner V ' 
Not that our difficulty lies in this, that we think 
such a change could not be wrought in so great a 
sinner. Of course such a change could be wrought ; 
we may not limit God's power — the wonder-working 
Gospel could effect this and more. We feel that the 
sister of Lazarus could indeed have been " the wo- 
man in the city that was a sinner," but are, we confess, 
most unwilling to admit it was so. We do not ordi- 
narily and somehow cannot get ourselves to think 
of the sister of Lazarus whom the Gospel seems to 
invest in a self-conscious purity, as of one who had 
ever lived an abandoned life. 2 

But to let this pass — soon another point claims our 
attention. Is the Mary Magdalene, out of whom went 
seven devils, in S. Luke's eighth chapter, the same 
1 S. John xi. 2. 2 See Appendix. 



I.] S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 3 

person as the penitent woman of his seventh ? These, 
then, are the questions that now come before us. 
Is S. Luke's woman in the city one and the same 
with Mary sister of Lazarus ? If so, are we also to 
reckon Mary Magdalene one with the penitent, thus 
making Magdalene and the sister of Lazarus to be 
but one person ? If our answers to these inquiries 
shall be in the affirmative, by no longer contem- 
plating them as separate individuals, we shall learn 
more than one important lesson. For so regarded, 
what a great deal more we seem to know of Mary 
Magdalene than we knew before ! How much more 
about Mary sister of Lazarus ! How much more 
about the woman in the city ! Separately, we know 
how we have derived comfort and instruction from 
the example of each ; but could we see those several 
and distinct features of character, which our minds 
have been accustomed to dwell on apart, and per- 
haps even as the characteristics of three separate 
persons — could we see these harmonised and blended 
into one great whole, we should, while preserving 
all the advantages to be derived from a separate 
contemplation of the three, obtain our most impor- 
tant lessons from the new whole we have thus formed. 
What we loved well singly, we shall love better 
united ; and we shall see in the combination of cha- 
racteristics we have thought opposite, a variety of 
new beauties of which we had formed no conception 
while viewing them separately. 1 

1 See Appendix. 
B 2 



4 S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. [SERM. 

Our first object will be to show that two actions 
of anointing, not one, are meant in the Gospels. All 
four Gospels contain some account of an anointing, 
but the several versions of the Evangelists vary not a 
little. S. Matthew's 1 and S. Mark's 2 agree. S. Luke's, 
however, you will observe, except for these three 
points of resemblance — that it is a case in which our 
Saviour is anointed ; that this anointing is the act of 
a woman, and takes place in the house of a man named 
Simon, — has little in common with the story told by 
the other Evangelists. Then with respect to S. John : 
he, we find, in two chapters, mentions the action, 3 in 
one of them very cursorily, 4 in the other 5 at length. 
The account thus furnished by him, except in one or 
tw r o particulars, is the same with the narratives of S. 
Matthew and S. Mark. Thus, then, we reduce our dif- 
ficulty to this ; that the difference in the main, lies 
between S. Luke and the other three Evangelists. 

Now S. Luke's account is as follows : " And one 
of the Pharisees desired Him that He w 7 ould eat with 
him. And He went into the Pharisee's house and 
sat down to meat. And behold a woman in the city 
which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat 
at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabas- 
ter box of ointment, and stood at His feet behind 
Him weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, 

1 S. Matt. xxvi. 6. 2 S. Mark xiv. 3. 

3 Although the word action is here used in the singular, it is 
believed that it is nevertheless not right to assign the words of 
S. John to one action only, as will hereafter be seen. 

4 S. Johnxi. 2. 5 S. John xii. 1. 



I.] S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 5 

and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and 
kissed His feet, and anointed them with the oint- 
ment. Now when the Pharisee which had bidden 
Him saw it, he spake within himself saying, This 
Man, if He were a prophet, would have known who 
and what manner of woman this is that toucheth 
Him ; for she is a sinner." Then follows our Sa- 
viour's reply in the parable of the two debtors, 
which is succeeded by this rebuke : " And He turned 
to the woman and said unto Simon, Seest thou this 
woman ? I entered into thine house, thou gavest Me 
no water for My feet ; but she hath washed My feet 
with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her 
head. Thou gavest Me no kiss; but this woman 
since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss My 
feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint ; but 
this woman hath anointed My feet with ointment. 
Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins which are many 
are forgiven ; for she loved much : but to whom 
little is forgiven the same loveth little." 

And now observe how different from this passage 
in tone, circumstances and especially in object, is 
the account which I shall extract and harmonise 
from the other Evangelists. 

" Then Jesus, 1 six days before the Passover, came 
to Bethany (to the house of Simon the leper) where 
Lazarus was which had been dead, whom He raised 
from the dead. There they made Him a supper and 

1 Compare throughout S. Matt. xxvi. 6 ; S. Mark xiv. 3 ; S. 
John xii. 1 . 



6 S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. [SERM. 

Martha served ; but Lazarus was one of them that 
sat at the table with Him. Then came Mary, hav- 
ing an alabaster box of very precious ointment, a 
pound of ointment of spikenard, and poured it on 
His head as He sat at meat and anointed the feet 
of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair, and the 
house was filled with the odour of the ointment. 
But when Judas Iscariot Simon's son which should 
betray Him and the disciples saw it, they had indig- 
nation, saying, To what purpose is this waste, for 
this ointment might have been sold for much ; why 
was it not sold for three hundred pence and given 
to the poor ? This Judas said, not that he cared for 
the poor, but because he w T as a thief and had the 
bag and bare what was put therein. When Jesus 
understood it, He said unto them, Why trouble ye 
the woman, for she hath wrought a good work upon 
Me. Let her alone, against the day of My burying 
hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have 
with you, and whensoever ye will, ye may do them 
good, but Me ye have not always. She hath done 
what she could, she is come aforehand to anoint My 
body for the burying. Verily I say unto you, Where- 
soever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the 
whole world, this also that she hath done shall be 
spoken of for a memorial of her." 

Such are the two accounts ; and it is difficult to un- 
derstand how statements so very diverse 1 should have 
been represented as two versions of the same action. 
1 See Appendix. 



I.J S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 7 

If we consider the two accounts as differing in 
tone, what can be more unlike than the contritional 
temper exhibited in the commended work of the one 
story and the happy assured peacefuiness manifest 
throughout the good work defended in the other. 
The Mary of the one appears before us as a tearful 
and suppliant penitent, the Mary of the other as a 
grateful and humble benefactor to Christ. 

If we consider them as differing in circumstances, 
is it likely that the quiet rebuke and the somewhat 
lengthened conversation with Simon the Pharisee 
should have taken place at the same time with the 
complaint of the purse-loving Judas, and the indig- 
nant murmurs of the disciples ? Or would it be 
likely, after Simon had been rebuked, that Judas 
should have been willing to contend against the act 
of Mary ; or if Judas's complaint had been first 
made, that Simon would have entertained his secret 
objection after he had seen a disciple so promptly 
and decisively put to silence ? 

If we consider them as differing in their object — 
in the one, Pharisaism is confounded, true righte- 
ousness commended. In the other, false pretences 
to charity are laid bare, true charity upheld. 

That not one, but two actions are here meant, I 
think may be clearly shown ; for, first — the time at 
which what was done takes place, we may reason- 
ably conclude, differs in the one Evangelist from that 
in the other three. But a little before the account 
as it stands in S. Luke, 1 that Evangelist represents 
1 See Appendix. 



8 S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. [SERM. 

our Saviour as speaking of S. John the Baptist, as 
one still living ; so early in His ministry did the 
anointing recorded by S. Luke take place. But the 
very first impression conveyed by the narratives of 
the other three Evangelists is, that the action of 
which they treat occurs late in His ministry. It not 
only speaks of His burial — our Saviour declaring 
the ointment was a preparation thereto ; but is set 
by them all, but a little before the crucifixion. So 
that here is a strong argument for two actions. 

Another reason for entertaining the view of a double 
action, is our perplexity as to how any person can 
be brought to blend in one (as occurrences of one and 
the same time) the great perturbation of the woman 
in the city, with that quiet, calm, retiring behaviour 
which is Mary's characteristic, at the period when 
what we contend is the second anointing takes place, 
— for it was then our Saviour's great love to her and 
her family was in the course of manifestation. 1 This 
beautiful calm, and that wondrous perturbation are 
hardly, from their mutual repulsiveness, reconcileable 
as existing in the same person at one and the same 
period of time. How could our Saviour say of her, 
" She hath chosen the good part ;" how too could 
those interesting passages just after the death of Laza- 
rus have taken place between herself and her Lord, if 
she had not as yet fully repented of her sins ? That 
serene piety, that holy resignation, that wondrous 
faith she exhibited before her brother's resurrection, 
the results of some experience, at least, in a religious 

1 S. John xi. 5. 



I.] S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 9 

life, are by S. John related as taking place before that 
anointing which occasioned Judas's complaint* If 
then she were, at this time, in so advanced a stage 
of holy living, what need of penitential tears and 
such a scene of emotion as is described by S. Luke. 
Wipe His feet with her hair she might very naturally 
do, no less in the more advanced stages than in the 
beginning of a repentance ; but where we first have 
" She hath chosen that good part" we hardly expect 
soon after " She washed His feet with tears." 

Corresponding with this is the fact that no notice 
is taken by SS. Matthew, Mark, or John, of the pe- 
nitential character of the action they recount. Tears 
are spoken of only by S. Luke. 

It is quite plain then, that two actions, not one, 
are recorded in the Gospels. And this is one im- 
portant step gained. 

We will now proceed to consider more particu- 
larly if these actions were not performed by one 
person only ; and first, if Mary sister of Lazarus, and 
the woman in the city are not really one and the 
same. And to obtain a clear view of this question 
the best course to be pursued is probably to start 
with an inquiry which the eleventh and twelfth chap- 
ters of S. John suggest. Both these chapters speak 
of an act of anointing, both of one and the same 
person, Mary sister of Lazarus, as being engaged in 
it. Now if we can show that the act alluded to in 
these two chapters may very well be a twofold, not 
a single act, and that, indeed, the words of the text 



10 S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. [SERM. 

best harmonise with this view, we have a very pro- 
bable argument that the first of these acts is the 
same with the only one of the kind mentioned in the 
other Gospels, which by a previous step in our argu- 
ment we have shown to be a distinct action from the 
narratives of the three other Evangelists, that related 
by S. Luke of the woman in the city who was a 
sinner. 

Now would it not appear to account fully and na- 
turally for the occurrence of S. John's words in the 
eleventh chapter, concerning the action of anointing, 
if we say that when about to narrate the death of 
Lazarus and his miraculous restoration to life, and 
further, in the twelfth chapter to give the account 
of Mary's anointing of the Lord for His burial, he 
is brought to speak of her in the following inciden- 
tal manner. " It was that Mary which anointed the 
Lord with ointment" (the past tense, you will ob- 
serve, did so some time before), 1 as though the Evan- 
gelist were to have expressed himself thus : "I am 
going to tell you of the raising of Lazarus from the 
dead, and of Mary's spirit of deep thankfulness de- 
monstrated in anointing our Lord's head for this 
astonishing deed of power granted in answer to her 
prayers ; but then I must intimate to you before- 
hand, that this Mary is no other than that same 
penitent woman who heretofore in great gratitude 
for the Saviour's mercies anointed His feet, washed 
them with tears, and wiped them with her hair." 
1 See Appendix. 



I.] S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 11 

But besides. In the very passage under consi- 
deration, — wiping the feet with hair is declared 
to be a special characteristic 1 of Mary sister of 
Lazarus. " It was that Mary which anointed the 
Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her 
hair." Now no other but the penitent woman be- 
sides Mary is related to have performed an act so 
altogether remarkable for its beauty and meaning, as 
the wiping the Saviour's feet with her hair. But it is 
plain that if any other than the sister of Lazarus had 
during the ministry of our Lord done such a remark- 
able act, it would no longer be a characteristic of 
Mary sister of Lazarus. We have, however, the 
penitent woman doing this very act. What is the 
obvious conclusion ? that Mary must be the same 
with S. Luke's penitent woman. 

And surely the great probability — the naturalness 
of this view of the oneness of the person concerned 
in these anointings — its simplicity and harmonious- 
ness with all the parts of the Gospels bearing on it, is 
sufficient to recommend it as the true one. 2 

Again, it is observable that, in the second anointing 
at Bethany, S. Matthew and S. Mark both speak 
only of the anointing of our Lord's head, making 
no mention of His feet. Whereas in that account of 
S. John, in the twelfth chapter, which we have 
shown already to be the same with S. Matthew and 
S. Mark's account, he only mentions the feet, and 
leaves out all mention of the head. But if we pro- 
1 See Appendix. 2 See Appendix, 



12 S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. [SERM. 

ceed to account for this singular difference in the 
several statements, every joint in the story will seem 
closely fitted. For we may conclude that with a re- 
newal of the humiliating act of anointing His feet and 
wiping them with her hair, 1 as related by S. John, 
Magdalene was now encouraged to perform for her 
Lord and Master, that yet higher office which seems 
to have most retained possession of the memory of 
SS. Matthew and Mark, as best indicating her renewed 
state and higher acceptance with the Saviour. Most 
natural it was, that, after having received so many 
marks of His esteem and approbation, while she 
still gave vent to her penitential feelings, she who 
once only ventured to outpour her ointment on His 
blessed feet, should now become emboldened in the 
expression of her love, and proceed to anoint His 
sacred head. 

Besides this, let us now endeavour to remove the 
prejudice which attends the use of the word " sinner" 
in the connection in which we find it in our text. The 
word sinner, as employed in the Scriptures, is not con- 
fined in its application to those who were guilty of any 
special sin, but commonly embraces only, in its mean- 
ing, a class of persons who from whatever causes were 
out of the pale of the Jewish Church. 2 For any per- 
son to have attempted to set himself free from those 
restraints which were binding by traditions manifold 
upon the Jew ; this was enough to constitute him 
" oLp.ctpTw\os" one out of the way, or as our English ver- 
1 See Appendix. 2 See Appendix. 



I.] S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 13 

sion renders it, a " sinner.' ' If, then, Mary in giving 
herself to a luxurious way of living, had in so doing- 
set herself free from the ordinary restraints of that so- 
ciety to which she belonged and the general opinion 
of the more sober portion of the community, she 
might very readily have incurred the odium of being 
virtually " a sinner. " I say virtually, for she need 
not of necessity be one publicly recognised as such. 
She might not be formally, as we should say, excom- 
municated — but yet be suspected generally as, in 
intent and by the natural consequence of her acts, 
an excommunicated person. For that she was not 
actually adjudged a sinner I take as proved : first 
from the fact that Simon admits her to his house at 
all — allows her to minister among his handmaidens, 
and to wash the feet of his Guest. And this, it will 
be observed, by the by, will affect in a much higher 
degree the view of her being all that the word 
sinner might imply. And secondly, the manner 
in which the Evangelist records him as thinking of 
her. "This Man if He were a prophet, would have 
known, (although it is true the people shrink not 
from her as they would if she had been formally ex- 
communicated) who, and what manner of woman 
this is that toucheth Him — for she is a sinner, — 
virtually so — i. e. known to me, although not pub- 
licly recognised as such." 

But thus far we have only conjectured that the 
worst meaning the word sinner suggests, might not 
have been applicable to Mary. There is, however, 



14 S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. [SERM. 

one fact which removes all our trouble on this head. 
A Jewess so sinning, would not merely have been 
excommunicated, 1 she would have been put to 
death by stoning. 

And now comes the last question. If Mary, sister of 
Lazarus, and the woman a sinner are one and the same, 
are we to make S. Mary Magdalene one with them 
too ? There is every reason to believe so. And first, 
let us consider if Mary Magdalene is not the same 
as the penitent ; and if we succeed in proving this, 
since we have shown that the penitent and Mary 
sister of Lazarus are one, we can but conclude that S. 
Mary Magdalene is one with Mary sister of Lazarus. 

I suppose that it will be admitted to be a very 
general tradition of the Western Church, that Mary 
Magdalene was the woman a sinner. It was, from 
the period of the First Gregory to the sixteenth 
century, her undoubted teaching. 2 In the first 
Prayer Book of King Edward the Sixth, the Gospel 
appointed for the Feast of S. Mary Magdalene, is 
the account of the penitent woman of the city. The 
Epistle and the Gospel follow the Sarum office. 
And although in the Eastern Church, 3 and in modern 
days in the Western Church the opinions of doctors 
have not been so consentient, yet there is no suffi- 
cient reason in Scripture against the view, and much 
to support it. In the Gospel account itself, the fact of 
the possession of Magdalene by the seven devils, 

1 See Appendix. 2 See in Appendix, 1st Note to p. 3. 
3 See Appendix. 



I.] S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 15 

rather predisposes us than otherwise, to accept the 
very prevalent view of her identity with the penitent. 
And there is no such difficulty in the narrative as 
would induce us to disallow the connection of the 
first part of S. Luke's eighth chapter, where he 
speaks of Mary Magdalene out of whom went seven 
devils, with the latter part of his seventh, from 
which our text about the sinner of the city is taken. 
S. Luke's silence as to the name of the sinner of 
the city (the only difficulty to be accounted for) is 
explained on the same principle as the silence pre- 
served in respect to S. Matthew's real name (by his 
three fellow Evangelists who speak of him as Levi, 
while he himself does not scruple to give his 
right name, i. e. a feeling of delicacy leading them to 
record circumstances in which the feelings of their 
fellow disciples are concerned, with as little offen- 
siveness to them as might be. 

Thus we hope that we have proved our point. But 
to strengthen this argument with still further degrees 
of probability, let us show T , by a view independent of 
all we have hitherto advanced, the direct grounds 
there are for considering that Mary sister of Lazarus 
and Mary Magdalene are one and the same. 

The Reverend Isaac Williams, in his very instruc- 
tive and beautiful work on the Passion, 1 says that — 
when we have formed unconsciously a picture of 
Mary Magdalene in our minds, we find that it ex- 
tremely resembles that which we have unconsciously 
1 Williams on the Passion. 



16 S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. [SERM. 

been forming at the same time of the sister of 
Lazarus. If any one # # were to give an accurate 
description of what he supposed to be the character 
of either of these, it would be, in great measure, a 
character of the other also. # * 

We behold S. Mary Magdalene standing among 
the nearest to our Saviour's cross, — sitting the last 
at His grave at night, and coming the first there in 
the early morning ; and more than all, the circum- 
stances of our Lord's interview with her, excite our 
strongest and deepest emotions ; so eminent is she 
among the other holy women for her devoted service ; 
and eminent, even among those holy women, in the 
favour and acceptance of her Lord. Now, in the 
previous history, we have circumstances recorded of 
an equal and similar interest in Mary, the sister of 
Lazarus. The same attachment to our Lord, the 
same favour expressed towards her. And the occa- 
sions on which they are mentioned, bring out the 
same points of disposition in both. In both the 
same calm, yet intense devotedness of character ; 
in both a disposition — retiring and contemplative ; 
and yet in both at the same time, earnest and un- 
shrinking. We have Mary Magdalene sitting by the 
sepulchre and withdrawing from the busier company 
of her friends, the Galilean women who had gone to 
prepare spices to do honour to their Lord. We 
have on another occasion Mary the sister of 
Martha sitting at Christ's feet to hear His instruc- 
tions and, in so doing, separated from her more 



I.] S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 17 

active sister, who was busied in preparations to do 
honour to our Lord by receiving Him worthily. We 
have Mary Magdalene sitting in grief at His grave. 
We have the sister of Martha sitting in grief in the 
house, mourning for her brother Lazarus. Again 
we have self-sacrifice and self-devotion in both ; in 
Mary Magdalene, when she stood at the foot of the 
Cross, in that most trying hour, amidst taunts and 
revilings, unmoved ; in Mary, the sister of Martha, 
when she seems to have sacrificed the best part of 
her livelihood to embalm our Lord's body with 
great cost, and that in spite of the reproaches of the 
bystanders. In both a depth of feeling which would 
be considered contemplative ; and yet in both, it was 
combined with a most active energy. 1 

The Gospel account of S. Mary Magdalene thus 
viewed, it is hoped will become to us a topic, as 
fruitful with interest, so pregnant with motives to 
holy living. Were we rapidly to sketch the life of 
Mary Magdalene so considered, it would appear that 
she in her earlier days, before Christ in mercy 
looked upon her, had led a life of gaiety and world- 
liness, entering into every pleasure, and this although 
at the time, fearful to relate, given up to the do- 
minion of seven devils. Released from these by our 
Saviour, her gratitude is most lively — her penitence 
deep and heartfelt. She is profuse in her self-aban- 
donment to the service of her Lord. Time passes 
by — the excitement of her conversion has also passed; 
1 See Appendix. 
C 



18 S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. [SERM. 

but the character of S. Mary has not failed in the 
graces which her lively penitence promised. She 
now still continues to show the deep devotion of her 
heart to Christ, attending and " ministering' ' with 
other holy women to His wants, — sitting at His 
feet, " choosing the good part" — entertaining Him at 
Bethany, as one of the family whom Jesus loved — 
stirring up by her simple pathos manifestations of 
feeling in the heart of our Saviour, so rarely ex- 
pressed, that but one other instance besides this re- 
mains on record, causing Him even to weep. 1 
With zeal untiring, with love unquenchable, she is 
ever at His side — at His crucifixion with the sacri- 
fice of tears — at His burial with the sacrifice of her 
spices and ointments — at His resurrection giving 
not up — but persevering in her search for Him to the 
last ; yea, till He reveals Himself to her great love. 
Then it is she seeks to embrace Him, and then we 
have to contemplate His mysterious shrinking from 
her, and His solemn words, "Touch Me not." 
With this too, comes His commission to her, to an- 
nounce the Gospel tidings of His resurrection to the 
brethren, thus becoming as the Fathers have said, 
" An Apostle to the Apostles themselves." 2 

Such is a brief summary of the incidents in the 
Scripture account of one whose penitence and sub- 
sequent holiness of life, we have thought a meet 
subject for our reflections at this season; and may God 

1 S. Lukexix. 41. 
2 Bp. Andrewes, Lib. Ang. Cath. Theol., v. 3, p. 44. 



I.] S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. 19 

of His great mercy grant that the words spoken by 
His servants at this period of the Church's year, 1 
may be so graced with the gift of His Holy Spirit, as 
to produce more and more the blessed fruits of a 
true penitence in those whose feet He may direct 
hitherwards, that they may in this holy house of 
prayer, deprecate His wrath for their own sins, and 
the sins of a sinful people. 

1 The season of Lent is here referred to. The first five Ser- 
mons of this course were delivered on the Wednesdays in Lent. 



c 2 



SERMON II. 

THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 



S. Luke viii. 2. 



Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven 

devils. 

We may, not unreasonably, conclude that S. Mary 
Magdalene was possessed of some small property ; 
for we can hardly suppose that she who was able 
thrice to bestow a costly gift of ointment on Christ 
is to be numbered among the less opulent members 
of society. And further, her constant ministrations 
to the necessities of our Lord, and this, in connec- 
tion with such persons as Joanna, the wife of Chuza, 
Herod's steward or treasurer, "who ministered to 
Him of their substance," seems plainly to intimate 
the same. For to be constant attendants on Christ 
and His disciples in their journey ings could not but 
be an expensive service ; implying that she and the 
rest, but more especially those mentioned by name, 
Joanna, Susanna, and herself had not merely means 
of self-support, but also had been blessed with a 
greater abundance to supply the needs of others. 



22 THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. [SERM. 

This opinion is also strengthened by observing the 
easy access she twice obtains to the highest rooms 
of the Pharisee's house. In the highest rooms of 
the house, the master, as is well known, was wont 
to receive his most distinguished guests. How great 
an honour and mark of superiority it was accounted 
to have admittance to them may be seen in our 
Lord's teaching in connection with those words of 
His, " Friend, go up higher." And not to mention 
the great mark of respect shown to Mary by the 
Jews who came to condole with her on occasion of 
the death of Lazarus ; we may observe, that her 
sister Martha is mentioned by S. John as " serving" 
on one occasion. Where, since her brother was of 
sufficient consideration to be a guest, for we read 
that " Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table 
with Him," we must not understand this serving to 
be of a menial kind, but as the superintendence and 
management of all things concerning the feast, un- 
dertaken as an act of good neighbourhood, perhaps 
of friendship. 

This point being conceded, we shall be assisted in 
a further inquiry. We now come to inquire into 
the nature of her sins. And here it must be con- 
fessed, that we have very little, if any thing at all, in 
the Gospels of a direct and positive nature to govern 
our inquiries. What we can learn must be ascer- 
tained by careful conclusions from scattered intima- 
tions, rather than from the direct declarations of 
Holy Scripture. 



II.] THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 23 

And first, what more likely than that she should 
render satisfaction for her unhallowed courses by- 
sacrifices made in that kind wherein she had offended? 
Costly gifts to Christ, an expensive attendance 
upon Him, was one striking feature in her penitence. 
We may then reasonably conjecture that abuse of 
the gracious gifts of God, her wealth, her influence, 
her talents, had been one of the principal causes on 
account of which Almighty God had suffered her to 
be afflicted with that dreadful visitation from which 
the text describes her release. 

And another cause, which had been instrumental 
as a snare for her soul, lies in the probability that 
she was endowed with more than ordinary graces of 
person. For proceeding on the same supposition, 
that the nature of her penitential sacrifices is an indi- 
cation of the nature of her offence, we find that the 
costly ointment which with profuse expense she had 
been wont to lavish upon her own person, that hair 
upon which the most curious pains had been be- 
stowed, those lips, those eyes whose mirrored reflec- 
tion she had with so great a content hung upon, 
were now all severally made to render tribute in her 
offerings to Christ. 1 The ointment is without any 
reserve now devoted to those holy feet which she 
had learnt to love better than her own head. With 
those much-valued tresses she can now wipe the 
Saviour's feet ; with those lips which well knew 
disdain, she even kisses them ; while those eyes 
1 See Appendix. 



24 THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. [SERM. 

which were wont to roam about drinking in the 
world's praise, now suffused with tears, are down- 
cast, not as yet daring to meet the gracious look of 
her approving Lord. 

That her hair was a cause of sin we have a pro- 
bable ground for concluding in her name Magdalene. 
And this, while it helps us in detecting her sin against 
God, most likely points out the great formal offence 
of which, in the eye of the Jew, she was guilty ; and 
which caused Simon the Pharisee to think of her as 
a sinner. For Magdela or Megaddela in the books 
of the Hebrews, we are told, signifies one who plaits 
the hair. So Magdalene they called her, as no less 
notorious for her pride in her hair than was Absalom 
before her. And because she humbled her pride 
and made her long hair, that " glory of women," 
subservient to Christ's honour, Christians love the 
name still and honour the memory of her who 
plaited her hair, by a name which transmits to all 
ages not more her sin than her gracious repentance. 
So much for her sin directly against God. 

For her offence in its more formal aspect, and as 
it would stand in the sight of the Jew, we have this 
to say. In her observance of the laws for keeping 
the Sabbath she probably had been most remiss, and 
could not on this day abstain from her customary 
attentions to this ornament of her person, and this 
was one of the works which by name were by their 
traditions prohibited on the Sabbath-day. Neither 
cutting, combing, or plaiting the hair were allowed. 



II.] THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 25 

Ointments and paint are by the same law forbidden. 
She had thus, then, despised the traditions of her 
people, which forbad a practice that an extreme 
vanity impelled her to indulge in. 1 

But let us proceed in our conjectural enlarge- 
ments upon her sins. By the persuasive eloquence 2 
of her lips, she had enticed others to drink deep of 
worldly pleasures ; to neglect the commandment 
which she had first herself learnt to despise. She 
had uttered with them high-minded words 3 — given 
expression to all the pride of her soul, and vent to all 
the unchastened licence of an irreligious tongue. 
By the fiery, haughty glances of her eye, she had 
stirred up the souls of those who waited to do her 
bidding, till they caught the infection that lurked 
at the bottom of her own proud soul. By its im- 
passioned look or its luxurious softness, she had 
excited affections which (though destined to disap- 
pointment) were nevertheless, as destructive to the 
happiness of those who were inflamed by them, so 
fraught with peril to her own as their wanton 
originator. 

Such are the sins in Mary Magdalene — a looseness 
of thought — a licentious freedom of behaviour — a 
disregard for the usages of that religious society to 
which she belonged — a love of admiration — pride of 
soul — a fondness for the world and its pleasures — 
sins which seem so far to have rioted in her soul, so 

1 See Appendix. 3 See Appendix. 

3 " Ore superba dixerat." — S. Gregorius, Horn. 33. 



26 THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. [SERM. 

far to have subjugated her to their influence that the 
enemy of man was allowed to carry her away captive 
at his will. Great, 1 surely, must have been that 
moral obliquity of conduct which prepared the way 
for the mysterious power Satan was exercising over 
her ! And that seven devils lodged in a bosom 
which, to all outward seeming (for it would appear 
that the possession was not manifest to the world) 
might have belonged to the most virtuous of Juda's 
daughters, is a truth which we must not, (as though 
willing to believe it without a counterpart in our 
case) shrink from contemplating. Rather trembling 
at its awful character, let us learn that lesson so 
humiliating to human nature, which it would 
suggest to our meditations. Assuming, and the 
more readily, as it has been by learned men so satis- 
factorily proved, that the persons called Demoniacs 
were really possessed with devils and not merely 
lunatics, as some have wished to show ; we now 
proceed to exhibit the great work of mercy in the 
release of Magdalene from demoniacal possession, as 
exclusively the act of the Saviour. By which we 
mean that in the first progress of her conversion, no 
intervention is required on her part of a concurrent 
working with Christ, — no exercise of her own will 
and power. He seeing her lying overwhelmed and 
crushed by the severity of this dreadful affliction, — 
totally unable to release herself in any way from (if 
indeed she were conscious of) these her spiritual 
1 See Appendix. 



II.] THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 27 

foes, — likely to be seduced by their cunning arts un- 
consciously more and more from the straight path ; 
He the Saviour of mankind Who came to bruise 
the serpent's head, looking mercifully upon her ca- 
pacity for holiness, extends His compassion towards 
her, and looses her bonds. 1 

But to be possessed of devils, may remind us too 
painfully of the words employed of those who 
haunted the tombs of Gergesa " exceeding fierce, so 
that no man might pass by that way" of one of whom 
it is said, "no man could bind him— no, not with 
chains, which were plucked asunder by him and the 
fetters broken in pieces, who night and day was in 
the mountains and in the tombs, crying and cutting 
himself with stones." And Mary Magdalene, you 
will say, was surely not one of these. And with 
reason, for we hear of no such account in the Gospels 
as her incompetency to manage her own affairs ; 
and we find her, immediately after her cure, in full 
possession and use of her property, and bestowing 
gifts from it — enjoying privileges which she does not 
seem at any time to have been a stranger to (as the 
access to the Pharisee's house) — powers and privileges 
which she would hardly have exercised so easily, if 
she had had to reinstate herself in her former posses- 
sions after a period of estrangement from society. No, 
we are not obliged to conclude that Mary Magdalene 
was possessed of spirits " exceeding fierce," because 
she was possessed of seven devils. Do we not re- 

1 See Appendix. 



28 THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. [SERM. 

member how our Lord said of the possessed lunatic, 
" This kind cometh not forth except by fasting and 
prayer?" There are then more kinds of possession 
than one ; and from this we might almost conclude 
that evil spirits are as various in tempers and dispo- 
sitions as men, and that the devil, with his wonted 
subtilty and craft, selects them for his several mis- 
sions according to their capacity and fitness. 

They need not, then, of necessity, exhibit them- 
selves in Mary outwardly and with violence. As it 
hath been with great truth remarked in a recent 
sermon, 1 " We are apt to think of those miserable 
cases of possession by Satan, as though those so 
held must needs always have had those outward 
marks of trouble and disquiet which some we 
read of in the Gospel had. But Satan holds not 
in one way only. Perhaps his surest hold is the 
most secret. Even now in those cases which bear 
most likeness to it, there is often no outward show of 
violence. Inwardly restless they must ever be. 
Our Lord speaks of the unclean spirit, as seeking 
rest and finding none . # '* And they whom he in- 
fluences, or in whom he dwells, can have no rest, 
having lost the centre in Whom Alone there is rest, 
God. But their unrest does not always show itself 
without. There is even now often deep unrest within, 
which is soothed in a manner, as it was in the unclean 
spirit, by going in a way out of itself. # * Such 
then seems to have been the Magdalene, actually 

1 Sermons preached at S. Saviour's, Leeds, p. 4. 



II.] THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 29 

indwelt by devils, but those leading not to outward 
violence, but to sins." 

Their approaches, doubtless, in Magdalene's case, 
were gentle and suited to the nature to be dealt with, 
and so subtle the dominion over her, that they held 
her in chains not even perceptible to herself. 

On reading such Scriptures as that at the end of 
S. Mark : — " He that believeth, and is baptized, 
shall be saved ; but he that believeth not, shall be 
damned ; and these signs shall follow them that 
believe ; in My Name shall they cast out devils:" 
one is prepared to expect that as the commission to 
baptize is to the end of the world, there being no 
limit set to the necessity for baptism earlier than 
the last day, so the commission to cast out devils 
would be to the end of the world likewise — provided 
only, there existed cases in which to exercise the 
power. And if cases of possession of devils were oc- 
casionally heard of amongst us, at this day, and if 
the power of exorcism were distinctly asserted and 
at times acted upon in our Church, we should per- 
haps think of both doctrine and rite, no otherwise 
than as being in perfect harmony with the teaching of 
the Scriptures, and as a thing of course, under the 
Christian dispensation. But as they are not heard 
of amongst us, we at the first very naturally con- 
clude that our Saviour never did mean that the 
gift of exorcism should be exercised in all ages, for 
what is a gift of this kind without a corresponding 
field on which to exercise it ? 



30 THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. [SERM. 

Now there may be some advantages derived from a 
consideration of what might be urged in opposition to 
this way of thinking. For first, it is well known that for 
a very long time after the Apostles, there were nu- 
merous instances of those possessed with evil spirits, 
who submitted themselves to the spiritual treatment 
of the Church. Such was the frequency of cases of 
this kind, 1 so definite a position did they occupy in the 
cares of the Church, 2 that to these unhappy persons 
w T ere allotted a particular division of each sacred 
edifice, a special ceremony of intercession was used 
for them, 3 and in addition, a special class of ministers, 
called exorcists, were separated with an express com- 
mission to pray for them both publicly and privately. 
Such are the important facts which the history of 
the early Church brings before us ; and we may be 
prepared to think that in these our days, neither are 
there instances of persons under demoniacal posses- 
sion on which to exercise such a power, nor persons 
who would presume to undertake it. And indeed in 
our Church, whatever may be the suspicions of some 
persons as to particular instances which have come 
under their notice, as in their symptoms resembling 
those which are recorded to have ordinarily taken 
place in cases of possession, we know nothing of 
such publicly. All we know on the subject con- 
cerning our own Church, is the existence of a canon 
(the 72nd,) wherein provision is made for such cases 
of possession as may occur. No minister is to pre- 

1 See Appendix. 2 See Appendix. 3 See Appendix. 



II.] THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 31 

sume to exorcise without licence obtained from the 
bishop. Up to the time then in which the canon 
was set forth, the year 1604, the belief in spiritual 
possession, and in the power of its removal, seems to 
have existed among our people ; but since this time, 
it is not at all easy to say what is the history of this 
power — whether it has or has not been exercised. 
The evidence upon the subject being so very ob- 
scure, we can make no safe conclusion as to whether 
or not the Almighty is pleased still to allow this 
grievous visitation to afflict us in some of its more 
modified forms. 

In the other branches of Christ's Church, the 
evidence is so far more certain as to indicate their belief 
in demoniacal possession up to this present time. In 
the rituals of the eastern, and of that portion of the 
western Church, 1 from which we are by God's mys- 
terious dispensations separated, an office for the 
possessed is retained ; and, as would appear, occa- 
sionally used up to this present time. 

To this, we are bound to add that observant 
persons, physicians and others have expressed them- 
selves unwilling to account for the strange pheno- 
mena, which in many remarkable cases have come 
under their notice, by resorting to the influence of 
natural causes as their proper explanation. 

All which evidence, if it do not make us willing 
to maintain with earnestness the doctrine of an 
indwelling of unclean spirits in these latter days of 

1 See Appendix. 



32 THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. [SERM. 

the Church's progress, should yet certainly make us 
very careful in avoiding any expression of a contrary 
opinion. 

Sufficient will it be for the purpose which we have 
in view in the present discourse, if we shall have 
succeeded in deepening our impressions of the intense 
activity and power of the arch enemy of souls, 
by merely receiving it as a possible truth that 
men may be, for any thing we know to the contrary, 
even in these later times possessed with evil spirits. 
And this even when to the world at large they appear 
to be much like other men. Thus forearmed with 
an indistinct fear of the greater evil — we may with 
the more certain belief pass on to entertain the 
lesser. This, none of us may with any safety to our 
soul's health refuse to believe, that Satan is allowed 
in God's providences, for the trial of good men, 
and the punishment of the wicked 1 to act upon 
us from without. It is therefore our plain in- 
terest to contemplate evil spirits as having power 
to insinuate themselves into, 2 and so to influ- 
ence our minds through the imagination by pre- 
senting ideas before it which harmonise with our 
own imaginings, and influential reasonings corres- 
ponding to that within us most apt to be affected by 
them — as the favour of the great to the ambitious — 
the hope of great successes to the speculator — of 
pleasures to the voluptuary, — of ease and comfort 

1 See Appendix. 

2 Seed on the Being, Nature and Offices of Evil Spirits, 120, 
Serm. VI., Dublin, 1750. 



II.] THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 33 

to the quiet and self-indulgent. And as an evil 
spirit from the Lord troubled Saul, so may we look 
upon Satan now as not less active in weighing upon 
men's spirits, and plunging them into fits of despair 
terminating in frenzy or self-destruction. 

And as heretofore for the preservation of the In- 
fant Jesus, an Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph 
in a dream, and now the good Angels of God watch 
over our slumbers and assist us otherwise in like 
manner, so we may not doubt that the frightful 
visions which sometimes harass the sleeper are 
wrought by the malice of evil spirits. In sleep as 
the body is at rest, so also the soul is entirely pas- 
sive. 1 What independent power the soul shall have 
when detached from the body we know not ; but 
being connected with the body it partakes, as it 
would seem, of the restraints imposed upon that 
matter to which it is united. When the body is at 
rest, the action of the soul itself becomes suspended 
save by operations external to either. And so, when 
it is in operation, it is without the concurrence of 
the will. If the soul had the faculty of will in sleep, 
how infinitely full of scruples and amazement should 
we ever be ; for then do thoughts intrude unbidden 
upon our minds which waking we should most 
abhor. 

And now, my brethren, let me close these remarks 

with a few words to you. If we really believed these 

things, if we believed that Satan is a personal, ac- 

1 Seed on the Being, &c., p. 120. 

D 



34 THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. [SERM. 

tive and malignant spirit, endued with power over 
us in proportion as our wills yield to the tempta- 
tions he casts in our way, can it be supposed that 
our precautions against his malice would be so slight, 
our fears of him so unreal as they are ? 

If, moreover, we believed that we are now engaged 
in such a fearful contest as that we, the knights and 
soldiers of the Cross, are " wrestling, not against flesh 
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, 
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, 
against spiritual wickedness in high places," (or rather 
wicked spirits in heavenly places, 1 ) could our con- 
flict with them be so tame and unmeaning, so unlike 
a battle waged with powerful invisible foes ? 

If too we believed that as Angels, such glorious 
hosts as Gehazi saw at the intercession of the pro- 
phet, 2 encamp around the faithful, so the evil spirits 
have their armies also; if we entertained a real, 
present and influencing feeling, that there is a perpe- 
tual warfare between these contending powers, 3 and 
that the prize for which they struggle is our souls, 
should we so tamely stand by passive spectators of 
the fight ? Should we be content, when it so nearly 
concerns us that it cannot be fought without our 
active co-operation, to assist by our concessions our 
deadly foes, baffle by our supineness our chiefest 
friends ? 

If it were our abiding conviction that the devil is 
ever hovering about us watching his opportunity ; 

1 See Appendix. 2 2 Kings vi. 15. 3 See Appendix. 



II.] THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 35 

that " the snare of the hunter'* is always set ; that 
" the arrow that flieth by day," " the sickness that 
destroy eth at the noon-day," is making havoc with 
its thousands and ten thousands ; that his emissaries 
as lions roam about ever seeking whom they may 
devour, could w 7 e, such being our impression, w T alk 
in this world and yet fear none of his pitfalls ? Could 
we see all things, talk of all things, and yet never in 
them apprehend his nearness to us ? If we with 
jealous eyes respected the terror by night, the pesti- 
lence that walketh in darkness ; if we considered 
that although good Angels watch around our bed, 
yet that devils are allowed to imprint (for our trial) 
seductive thoughts on the soul in our dreams, could 
we so calmly resign ourselves to rest without special 
prayer to be defended against his malice ? Should 
we not with all earnestness implore God that He 
would give His Angels charge over us to keep us in 
all our ways, to enable us to tread upon " the lion 
and the adder ?" 

If we with the eye of faith were wont to discern 
that wicked tempter going about pouring poisonous 
suggestions in the hitherto pure minds of some, fo- 
menting evils and giving his directing hand to the 
trains of mischief which he has planted in the already 
corrupted minds of others, could we mark with 
such apathy those signs of his evil work in us, which 
enter our minds, we know not whence, if they 
be not of his suggesting ? Or again, should we so 
unsuspiciously entertain such subtle and novel 

d2 



36 THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. [SERM. 

thoughts and theories as originate, to all seeming, in 
no previous associations, either of idea, person or 
place, but as it were are insinuated into our minds 
by a sudden inspiration ? 

If too, we had such a strong belief in the words of 
Holy Writ as we pretend to, could we make so little 
account of those awful powers which are committed 
to the Ministers of the Church that the " spirits of 
the wicked may be saved in the day of the Lord 
Jesus " ? Can we believe that " we may be delivered 
over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh", when 
in all our actions we lightly regard that protection 
which in His Church a Gracious God has vouch- 
safed to us to contend against his wiles. 1 

And could we so easily give up the strictness of 
our appointed rule of prayer when, it may be, we 
are wearied by the labours or the pleasures of an 
over-exciting day, or when the infirmities of a weak 
body call for ease and indulgence, if we thought that 
in all probability not a beneficent Angel but some 
malignant spirit had whispered : "Take thy ease for 
this once, the Good God is merciful and thou art 
weary" ? 

If, moreover, we believed Satan to delight in lies 
and evil speaking, being himself the father of lies 
and the great slanderer, could we allow ourselves so 
freely in these and similar licences of the tongue ? 

If too we believed that he most rejoices to make 
men talk lightly, familiarly, unbelievingly of him, 
1 1 Cor. v. 5. See Appendix. 



II.] THE INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 37 

and helps them in this their humour, that they may 
be brought to think lightly of him, should we be 
willing to talk lightly, think lightly of him ? 

No, my brethren, if we believed these things, we 
should act far otherwise than now w T e do. A man 
when he is conscious that there is danger in his path, 
prepares himself with all precaution to w T ard off the 
threatened evil. But he aims to master the nature 
of the danger that he may arm himself accordingly. 
He is not content with a vague impression resting 
on his mind that there is danger, but seeks to reduce 
it to a tangible form that he may shape the charac- 
ter of his resistance accordingly. 

And it must be so with us : if we would contend 
for Christ as His true soldiers, and resist the devil, 
we must realise more fully, more truly, the person- 
ality as of Him Who " has power to cast both body 
and soul into hell/' so of him whom He has en- 
dued with power to be His agent in this awful work 
of the Divine wrath and retribution. 



SERMON III. 

S. MARY MAGDALENE THE MODEL OF A 
PERFECT REPENTANCE. 



S. Luke vii. 37, 38. 
And, behold, a woman in the city which was a 

SINNER, WHEN SHE KNEW THAT JeSUS WAS SET AT MEAT 

in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box 
of ointment, and stood at His feet behind Him 
weeping, and began to wash hls feet with tears, 
and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, 
and kissed hls feet, and anointed them with the 
ointment. 

Before entering upon the subject of the repentance 
of Mary Magdalene, we shall do well to ascertain in 
what particulars a perfect repentance may be con- 
sidered to consist. 

And 1st. A distinction is to be made between re- 
pentance considered as a virtue and as a discipline. 1 
We are to consider that nothing short of a sincere 
repentance can appease God ; while the Church, 
although desiring to see inward repentance in all her 

1 In the whole of this clause the authority of Hooker has been 
for the most part followed, and his language generally preserved. 
— See Keble's Hooker, book vi. chap. 3. §§ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 



40 S. MARY MAGDALENE, [SERM. 

members, is yet, of necessity, obliged to be satisfied in 
her requirements with the external acts of penitence ; 
since these are the only means she has of judging of 
its reality. Further, we are to consider that the disci- 
pline of repentance is not always necessary to the 
acceptableness of penitence with God ; — the virtue 
of repentance always. Now, the virtue of repent- 
ance is a fruit or effect of Divine grace : and the 
first operation of this grace is to open and illuminate 
the eye of faith, so as to make known to the soul 
those truths upon belief of which repentance is 
built. These are the doctrines of a judgment to 
come, and the endless torment of sinners ; and pro- 
duce (which is the next step) a salutary fear in our 
minds. Yet we are to be cautioned against sup- 
posing that repentance ensues upon fear. Faith 
must be further called into action, and conceive 
both the possibility and means of averting the evil 
which fear has only represented to the mind in its 
true colours ; — and then that perfect love which 
casteth out fear must be allowed its influence in this 
work ; for as our love fails not till we sin, so we can- 
not possibly forsake sin unless we first begin to love. 
Faith, fear^ love ; these, then, are acts prior to, but 
leading to a true repentance. The beginning of repent- 
ance is when we are enabled to consider our own sin 
as causing the wrath, and needing the mercy of God. 
From this arises a pensive and corrosive desire that 
we had not so offended our Almighty Father. 
And this is the feeling which stimulates the soul 



III.] THE MODEL OF REPENTANCE. 41 

to action; and the penitent is thus found to re- 
alize in himself these three effects ; the aversion 
of the will from sin ; submission to God in sup- 
plication and prayer; the purpose of a new life 
testified by present works of amendment : three 
things, from which repentance may be comprised in 
one definition as — a virtue that hateth, bewaileth 
and showeth a purpose to amend sin : or in three 
words — we offend God in thought, word, and deed. 
To thought they make contrition answerable; to 
word, confession ; to deed, works of satisfaction ; 
and we are to take notice as regards contrition, that 
the principal thing in it is that alteration whereby 
the will, which was before delighted with sin, doth 
now detest and shun nothing more. The sum of all 
which is, that the highest cause of repentance is, 
grace ; and that faith, fear, love, have their proper 
force and efficiency in producing it ; but what pro- 
perly constitute it are these three — contrition, con- 
fession and satisfaction. 

Were these essentials of the virtue of repentance 
really complied with, they would undoubtedly suffice 
to gain the favour of Almighty God. And does the 
penitence of Mary Magdalene come in any point 
below the spirit of these requisitions ? Let us ex- 
amine this point. 

" When she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the 
Pharisee's house" When she knew — her knowledge 
was then the result of inquiry : she had been think- 
ing of her Great Physician from the time of her 



42 S. MARY MAGDALENE, [SERM. 

miraculous cure. Her thoughts had brought with 
them gratitude ; her gratitude was fast swelling into 
love. For the Saviour having triumphed over the 
malice of Satan against this chosen vessel of His 
mercy, the preventing grace of God had now free 
access to her breast, and had effected a lodgement 
in her heart: she was, in fact, grateful for her re- 
lease from demoniacal possession. She acknow- 
ledged her former subjection to those evil spirits, 
concerning whose existence in her we have before 
suggested that she was probably, during the period 
of possession, unconscious. To acknowledge the fact 
of their presence in her, and to insinuate to herself 
the great probability that their indwelling was the 
consequence of her sins, followed in natural course. 
Of course this led to the consideration of her past 
life, and the necessary discovery of its melancholy 
deficiencies in the sight of God ; and thus, being 
free from the delusions of Satan and in her right 
mind, the awakening principles of a judgment to 
come and the eternal misery of sinners assailed her 
soul with their natural force. Laying hold on 
these, then, with the first feeble attempts of faith, 
she straightway comes, with trembling, upon the 
estate of fear. How long this process of renewal 
was progressing, we have no means of judging, 
— save that we know that the real nature and 
hideous deformity of sin is long in manifesting 
itself to the returning penitent. We so love our- 
selves, and sinful habits and thoughts so much be- 



III.] THE MODEL OF REPENTANCE. 43 

come, when indulged, parts of our nature, that we 
cannot readily divest ourselves of the delusive con- 
viction that when oft we are in deepest error, we yet 
stand justified in the sight of God. In a real and 
safe repentance light is commonly found to break in 
upon us slowly, and as one vice is removed and its 
corresponding virtue realized, so does it help us, as 
by a freshly acquired power, to discern deformities 
of whose previous existence we had no suspicion. 
Thus, then, we come to show how, moved by grace — 
aroused by faith — and alarmed by fear, her grateful 
feelings to her Benefactor as Man become insen- 
sibly merged into love of Him as the Son of God. 

She had yet to know herself. Her pride of heart, her 
stubborn self-will, her own ways of seeing and under- 
standing things ; in short, all her self-confidences had 
yet to be laid bare before her eyes. And here, perhaps, 
was the turning point of her whole life and charac- 
ter. From this time commences that process in 
her mind and heart which constitutes her true re- 
pentance, and by which sin comes before her as 
" a cause which procureth the wrath and needeth 
the mercy of God." 1 God drives away from us our 
enemies, and by His preventing grace puts us in a 
condition to resist their future assaults ; but this 
done, it is then we ourselves must act. We must 
become fellow-workers with Him, or we are left to 
perish in our sins. Had Magdalene neglected the 
present call to self- reflection, devils of a worse cha- 

1 Hooker, vi. 3. $ 3. 



44 S. MARY MAGDALENE, [SERM. 

racter might have taken possession of a soul which, 
empty and swept of its former tenants, and garnished 
with the mere semblance of virtues, offered no barriers 
to oppose their entrance. But reflection on her 
ways and life and the end of her being, brings the 
full consciousness of her sinful state before her mind. 
One evil act haunts her conscience, and another 
presses quick on the heels of it, and the more she 
reflects, the more her wretchednesses increase in 
number, and what appeared before minor faults now 
before the tribunal of an awakened conscience swell 
into aggravated sins. 

Her vain confidences one by one give way. Dis- 
lodged from one standing point to another, beaten 
from all her retreats and strong holds, she at length 
confesses that indeed all may be wrong, where her 
pride had heretofore taught her to believe that all 
was entirely right. So the sense of sin becomes 
oppressive. But how is she to be relieved of its 
burden ? Who was to forgive sin ? Faintly at first, 
it may be, are whispered to her soul, the pregnant 
words of S. John the Baptist, with which men's 
tongues were then rife : " Behold the Lamb of God 
That taketh away the sins of the world." And her 
perceptions were not so dulled but she would readily 
conceive hopes that the power of Christ was indeed 
equal to the prophet's word. 

Had He not confronted the very author of sin 
himself, and in her own proper person driven him 
out of his possession ? and could He not remove sin 



III.] THE MODEL OF REPENTANCE. 45 

which was but his offspring ? She would then be- 
take herself at once to the Saviour. Her earnest 
desire was to present herself in humility and penitence 
before Him and submit her life to His disposal. Her 
feelings for long had been too thronging and tumul- 
tuous to know how best herself to guide her ways. 
What she wanted was the direction of Him Who had 
already brought her to herself ; that so He might en- 
lighten her as to all future stages of her penitence. 

But how to appear before Him in such a man- 
ner as would prove most acceptable to Him ; To 
present such a gift as shall be truly acceptable 
to the receiver, she knew is not always a very easy 
matter to accomplish. We must know another well 
before we may hope to please him in a gift. For 
what may be fitting enough for another to receive, 
may not always be becoming in us to offer ; and con- 
trariwise. And this would appear to Mary Magda- 
lene an express difficulty in the instance of That 
Remarkable Person for Whom her gift was designed. 
He was One not well known. He had to be studied. 
What was it that could be acceptable to Him Who 
judged of men and things by a standard so unfamiliar 
to herself and others ? Let us divine her thoughts. 
And first, the result of one long meditation is, that 
she will do Him honour by anointing Him with pre- 
cious ointments. Well, you may perhaps say, that 
was fitting indeed for her who had heretofore con- 
sumed so much of it in unprofitable waste upon her- 
self, but how then grateful to Him ? To Him, what 



46 S. MARY MAGDALENE, [SERM. 

we are pleased to lavish upon our persons, may be far 
from the most acceptable offering. But she well pon- 
ders over her contemplated act, and conceives a gift 
not more appropriate for herself to offer than suitable 
for Him to receive. Was He not the Christ the 
Anointed ? What more fitting way than by an act of 
anointing to declare her belief in Him Whom the Fa- 
ther had by the Holy Spirit anointed to be the 
Eternal Prophet, Priest and King. " He is the 
Christ," she says. It is enough to see Him. The 
evasions of our priests cannot confuse our convic- 
tions. Do not the blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb 
speak ? nay, the very fiercest devils own His pre- 
sence, and confess the Son of God f 1 This is He 
of Whom the prophet speaks, that the Lord anointed 
Him to preach the Gospel to the poor ; of Whom 
David sings as "The Anointed with fresh oil:" 
" anointed with the oil of gladness above His fel- 
lows." What more fitting then than that I should 
by this kind of sacrifice declare as my shame in one 
of its most fatal instruments, so my belief in the 
source and hope and joy of my salvation. But more 
than this : she grows fond of sacrifices in behalf of 
this now Best Beloved of her soul. Riches, beauty, 
station, — all were to be frankly given up. She knew 
the power of her own will, had counted the cost, and 
therefore confident in the strength of her love, un- 
dertook at once that great work, which others less 
ardent would have been obliged to prosecute more 
1 Cheminais. Sermons, pp.64, 65. 5me Edit. 1710. See Appendix. 



III.] THE MODEL OF REPENTANCE. 47 

slowly. Once the places of assemblies for pleasure and 
entertainments were well known to her, — now one 
holy all-subduing thought was to occupy her mind, 
how best to follow after Him Only Who has wounded 
her heart with a shaft of penitential grief so keen that 
its piercings deny her all repose. 1 She had friends and 
we may suppose they were not indifferent to her. To 
an ardent nature such as hers strong attachments were 
most natural. That she who was so well calculated 
to inspire affection should be loved and sought after 
is nothing wonderful. But now to such a degree 
did this new affection rule her, that no one, she 
thought, (no, not even her dearest friend) should 
be allowed to stand in competition with it. So she 
resolves to go to Him full of penitence and com- 
punction as to a most Holy and Divine Prophet 
Who had the power of remitting sins from God, 
trusting that whatever may be the difficulties of her 
case she should obtain pardon from Him, and have 
His effectual help to secure herself from all future sin. 
One wonders whether Magdalene was led to apply 
those words of the Canticles to herself: " I will arise 
and go about the city ; in the streets and in the broad 
ways I will seek Him Wliom my soul loveth." " Tell 
me, O Thou Whom my soul loveth, where Thou 
feedest ;" and again, " While the King sitteth at table 
my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof." 

This was to meditate deeply. But let us see these 
her meditations' proper depths by what she did ; for 

1 Chermnais, 62. 



48 S. MARY MAGDALENE, [SERM. 

the actions in which a meditation results are the 
proper tests of its soundness. 

Her choice of the Saviour's religion she is de- 
termined shall be conspicuous. " When she knew 
that Jesus sat at meat." Had she preferred secresy 
she might have watched the Saviour's return from 
the Pharisee's house ; but she waits not as did 
Nicodemus, that she might come to Jesus by night. 
She holds not back with Joseph of Arimathea for 
fear of the Jews ; her wealth and consequence do 
not deter her from openly confessing Christ. 
Though an unexpected guest, she seeks Him out, 
as courageous 1 in the search for salvation as she had 
been bold in the ways of perdition. She chooses 
Simon's house and a festive occasion and throngs 
of guests to make her sacrifice as public as may be. 
She does violence to her private feelings and to her 
woman's nature, and is willing that the whole city 
who had made her extravagant humours the theme 
of their talk, should now be furnished with matter 
which could hardly fail yet more to provoke their 
contempt. She would, in short, give satisfaction 
for a public scandal by a public penitence. Con- 
ferring w T ith no one, she silently pierces the crowd, 
and threading her way reaches the upper chamber 
where our Lord sits ; and without any excuses for 
her freedom, hastens to perform the act she had con- 
templated. She stayed not to prepare people's minds, 
thinking that love would cool, while she stood con- 
1 See Appendix. 



III.] THE MODEL OF REPENTANCE. 49 

jecturing what others would say, and fearful lest her 
own purpose might be weakened. " She stood at 
His feet behind Him weeping." At His feet — be- 
hind Him — as He lay reclining at His meal, the head 
supported on the left arm towards the table and the 
feet stretched in the opposite direction. At His 
feet then she stood, and quite behind Him. She 
deems herself too unworthy— not sufficiently puri- 
fied to sustain the sight of a Being so Holy. 1 She 
knows not any place sufficiently humiliating, but as 
she cannot descend lower, it is at this tribunal that 
she first stands (for criminals stand in the presence 
of their judge), and then falls on her knees a suppli- 
ant penitent. She made for herself of His feet, so to 
speak, a sanctuary of refuge, an altar, 2 to which she 
came with the libation of tears, the expiation of 
ointment, the sacrifice of the feelings ; for " the 
sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit." " And began 
to wash His feet with her tears," — tears once un- 
worthily prostituted to the furtherance of her pas- 
sions, — tears, and these of all places, at a festive 
board, she shames not to offer to Christ in expia- 
tion of her sins. Weeping, as once she was wont 
to think, makes ravages on the face of beauty ; but 
she regards not now the swollen eye ; and so plen- 
tiful are her tears that they suffice to bedew the 
feet, soiled with the dust of travel, of the Saviour 

1 See Appendix. 

2 S. Paulinus, ep. 4, ad Severum, Bib. Patr. Lugduni, 16/7, 
p. 176. 



50 S. MARY MAGDALENE, [SERM. 

of the world. " And did wipe them with the hairs 
of her head." There were towels by in plenty ; but 
yet she unfastens her hair • she intermingles, con- 
fuses those long tresses, a snare to her own and 
others' souls, to satisfy her craving after a real afflic- 
tive penitence. "And kissed His feet." Nor yet 
satisfied she goes on to expiate by holy kisses the 
freedoms she had heretofore taken ; and she signifies 
that she thus embraces for the future humility and 
the poor who are Christ's feet, His lowest mem- 
bers. And here, her humiliation, as it has gone on 
deepening, passes on to thoughts inspiring feelings 
of encouragement and the hope of acceptance ; for 
she sought by this action not more to propitiate 
mercy and favour than to express her faith in her 
pardon and reconciliation ; for of pardon no less 
than of love and charity is a kiss the symbol. 1 

" And anointed His feet with the ointment." An 
action by no means uncommon. Many women 
might have so honoured Christ ; since the wise 
man intimates a general practice when he says, " Let 
thy garments be always white ; and let thy head lack 
no ointment." 2 But Magdalene's gift was graced with 
a sacred and deep meaning which made it in His 
eyes to Whom it was offered priceless ; for He recog- 
nized in it not so much the precious ointment as the 
penetrating faith and holy love which dictated the 
gift. No longer was this precious unguent to mi- 

1 S. Ambrosii Expos. Evan. sec. Luc, lib vi. § 20. 

2 Eccles. ix. 8. 



III.] THE MODEL OF REPENTANCE. 51 

nister to her luxury. Her wealth and all the accom- 
modations of life which it laid at her command were 
henceforth to be placed at His disposal. Suppose 
then yourselves, my brethren, of a sudden called on 
to surrender voluntarily all the ease and comfort and 
abundance and luxury of your present way of living. 
How difficult, amidst the influences so deadening to 
the spiritual life which surround you, to forego your 
wonted enjoyments; and yet Magdalene experienced 
in making these sacrifices all the constraining mo- 
tives to return to the world which you could have 
done. Endeavour then in this way to appreciate 
the greatness of her self-abandonment in this scene 
of her penitence. 

All this while she is silent ; she does not even im- 
plore in words the clemency of the Saviour ; of 
eloquence of speech there is none, of eloquence of 
action everything. In this exhibition of a lively sen- 
sibility there was no merely passing fervour, a sudden 
resolve, a purpose full of heat and straightway grow- 
ing cool again. All the rest of her days were spent 
(as we shall have occasion to show as we progress 
in these discourses) in adding fuel to the flame of 
holy love which burnt within her. Not only without 
any return to the world did she for ever attach her- 
self to Christ, but retained to the end as is generally 
believed the character of a holy penitent. 1 

How great then was her contrition is properly 
appreciated by considering how large were the fruits 

1 See note to page 12 in Appendix. 
E 2 



52 S. MARY MAGDALENE, [SERM. 

of it in confession and satisfaction. Her confession 
was not merely a confession in private to God, not 
merely a confession to one ordained of God to the 
office of guiding souls, but a confession before Christ 
and all Jerusalem. She combines in one act all the 
kinds of confession. And with confession she made 
satisfaction in its twofold character : she made 
all the amends in her power for her sins ; to God, 
by sacrificing whatsoever had been sources of her 
sinfulness ; to man, by renouncing publicly her past 
evil courses, and by a public act of resolution to 
lead such a life for the future as would teach all 
men by her example those virtues which were most 
opposite to the vices in which she was wont to 
indulge. 

My brethren, the recital of these beginnings of re- 
pentance in the Magdalene has surely conveyed its 
own lesson. We can hardly behold the portraiture 
of a repentance so complete, in these its early stages, 
without taking shame to ourselves for our own short- 
comings in this grace. Some there are who scarce 
know what repentance is, in any of its features ; 
some who substitute sorrow, its mere semblance, for 
repentance ; and in others repentance is but too 
commonly an imperfect work. Rarely do we find 
it in the perfect state in which it is seen in Magda- 
lene. And that we may the better appreciate this 
fact, we shall do well to remember that we were, 
when we fell into sin, Christians ; Magdalene only 
in the condition of the Jew. 



III.] THE MODEL OF REPENTANCE, 53 

May it not be with most of us, that even if we 
have been guilty of few and those small sins, and 
Magdalene have been guilty of great ones, that the 
difference of our respective privileges and graces in 
the matter of religion may make us in reality equally 
guilty with herself ? How many of us will be able 
to say, I have ever been more righteous than 
Mary Magdalene ? Let us indulge this humble 
frame of mind in receiving the instruction of the 
Gospel ; for thus may we be the better prepared to 
enter upon a faithful comparison of our repentances 
for sin with the example before us. 

And when compared with her penitence, how 
cold — how unmeaning — how destitute of affection — 
how incommensurate with our sins do our peniten- 
tial sacrifices commonly appear. Hardly have we 
confessed ourselves penitents, but we have been 
eager to restore ourselves to peace — whispering to 
ourselves peace when there is no peace, coming to 
the feet of Christ with the kiss of peace and recon- 
ciliation when we have not washed them with the 
tears of a thorough repentance, nor wiped them with 
the cleansings of a true sacrifice. We rejoice in at 
once putting on the best robe and the ring, and calling 
for the fatted calf. We have healed our hurt slightly, 
using, it may be, false medicines or lying physicians. 
Nothing is there among all those things at which we 
should aim, so difficult as a true heartfelt repent- 
ance ; yet we allow Satan to delude us into em- 
bracing a less sorrowful way. 



54 S. MARY MAGDALENE, [SERM. 

And if our repentances have not been what they 
should be, in what is it they fail ? On God's part 
all has been done that is needful for us. " What 
could have been done more to My vineyard, that I 
have not done in it ?" The Saviour of mankind 
has prevented us with His grace from the first mo- 
ments of our spiritual life in baptism. And His 
holy Angels have ever been watching the opportunity 
to minister to us as heirs of salvation. Have we on 
our parts answered to His care for us, or been 
so faithful to our gifts, as not to discourage their 
approaches ? Have we so meditated as Mary Mag- 
dalene, until a holy horror at our sinfulness is 
realized, — until all the disorders of our life confront 
our amazed eyes, — until Christ's love for us in 
saving such wretched sinners, compels us to acknow- 
ledgment, and we make resolution to lead a new 
life? Have we waited upon Christ till we have 
been moved to tears of compunction — to self-abase- 
ment — to sacrifice — to abandonment of all things 
that offend ; or have we rather, after attempting to 
place our responsibilities before our eyes as immor- 
tal beings, soon grown restless or wearied, and 
yielded to the seductive whispers of ease. Medita- 
tion of this sort is essential to a lively effectual re- 
pentance. All the graces in Magdalene, you have 
observed, are traceable under Christ to the fervour, 
depth and purpose of her meditations. When a 
great blessing was bestowed upon her, she naturally 
set herself to think of the Giver. She remained 



III.] THE MODEL OF REPENTANCE. 55 

not in a quiescent state expecting more grace when 
as yet that already granted remained unapplied. 
And little wonder if from such beginnings sprung 
such results — such gracious fruits in that most holy 
life. 

Is the Christian character of some penitent poor 
and weak, and does he feel his growth in grace 
stunted now ? And when he hears of Christ and 
His Cross, and would with S. Mary Magdalene 
speed thither, does he find he has no heart to it ? 
Let him rely upon it, his meditation — his prayers, 
at first starting, were wanting in purpose — deficient 
in fervour. 

Does he wonder that he cannot bring his mind to 
love more Christ's lowest members His poor, 
or His holy sanctuary and its more self-denying 
ordinances ? Let him cast his eye back, and let 
those poor beginnings of repentance haunt his 
memory — a repentance to be repented of again. 

And if, brethren, we would recover former losses, 
we must use a double diligence now, and be severe 
in proportion as before we were tender to ourselves. 
In no case let us be deceived by thinking that re- 
pentance is a light work, or one that belongs to any 
special period of life, as either to be thought of with 
complacency as a duty that is past, or as a call to 
be awaited in the womb of the future. Rather let 
us look upon it as the work of the entire Christian 
life. Our Saviour came not to call the righteous 
— there were none such — but sinners to repentance. 



56 S. MARY, THE MODEL OF REPENTANCE. 

All would have need of repentance whom He should 
call. Repentance, to the end of the world, was to 
be one of the requisites demanded of all those 
(infants or adults) who should be admitted by bap- 
tism into covenant with Christ. 

Therefore, in whatever stage of our Christian 
progress we are, repentance is still necessary to us ; 
and so conclude we, in the words of a Father, 1 " Let 
us love Christ, to Whom love is due — Him let us 
kiss, Whom to kiss is chastity — with Him let us be 
united, Whom to marry is virginity — to Him let us 
be subject, to be under Whom is to stand above the 
world — on His account let us be cast down, with 
Whom to fall is rising again — with Him let us die, 
in Whom, although dying, yet we live, Who vouch- 
safes to be all this to us by turns, notwithstanding 
all that we His servants have been to Him." 

1 S. Paulinus, ep. 4, ad Severum, page 178. 



SERMON IV. 

JESUS THE JUSTIFIES OF THE PENITENT. 



S. Luke vii. 47. 



Wherefore her sins, which are many, are forgiven; 
for she loved much *. but to whom little is for- 
given, the same loveth little. 

A good Christian feels in himself for those in sin a 
deep compassion. Although he may never have 
been an open and high-handed sinner, he either has 
felt in himself the workings of a sinful perverted 
nature inclining him to the worst sins, and so, 
recognizing in himself tendencies to wrong feelings 
and evil desires, knows, by the power of a lively 
sympathy, how possible it is that the results, to 
which they tend, may be realized in himself ; or, 
has had to struggle against the more alarming in- 
roads of sin, and to recover by the grace of God 
that place in the kingdom of Christ from which 
his post-baptismal wanderings have cast him. Thus, 
the character of the Christian is not of a triumphant 
exulting order, as though joyous in the conscious- 
ness of an undoubted goodness. His gladness of 
heart is ever sobered by the accents of penitential 



58 JESUS THE JUSTIFIER [SERM. 

feeling. And this it is which enables him so deeply 
to sympathize with sinners. 

But if this be the character of the members of the 
christian body, it is so in an especial manner of its 
Great Head. Our Saviour in this, as in all other 
cases, is the most pefect model for our imitation. He 
contrasts in Magdalene's conduct, as compared with 
that of Simon the Pharisee, the christian temper of 
mind towards sinners, with the temper produced by 
the rigid morality of earthly schools, or the stern ex- 
acting character of the strict letter of the law of God. 
Yes, our Saviour can in the highest degree, sym- 
pathize with the struggles of the returning sinner, 
as having more than any other realized in Himself, 
in a singular yet most real manner, those sentiments 
of humiliation for sin which characterise every true 
penitent. In Him was no sin ; and yet He bore 
that nature in which sin had effected its sad and 
fearful ravages. This nature its Creator, seemingly, 
had never designed to exist, unsupported by graces 
of a supernatural order. 1 The rest of the animal 
creation had their appointed rule of action, an in- 
stinct to guide them and preserve them faithful to 
the law of their original nature. But for man, when 
born (not, as originally created, in the image of God 
with supernatural gifts and graces, but as mere 
man and in his own image), 2 reason and conscience 

1 See Bishop Taylor, quoted by Coleridge in Aids to Reflection, 
pp. 193, 204 : 1839. Also Bishop Bull. State of Man before the 
Fall, passim. Some Important Points, &c., vol. ii. 1816. 

2 Compare Gen. v. 3, with Gen. i. 27. 



IV.] OF THE PENITENT. 59 

were all the security he had to resist the inclinations 
of the flesh, the solicitations of the world and the 
devil. And these very gifts themselves which dis- 
tinguish man from the brute creation, from the 
corruption and perversion of those faculties which 
render them of use to us, are liable to become 
darkened, and their guidance to be more or less 
withdrawn from us. So that with a law of nature 
exacting from him higher requirements than that 
law which obliges the brute, man yet possesses 
faculties and inclinations which of themselves assist 
him, in complying with those requirements, less than 
do the instincts of the brute aid it in discharging 
the end of its being. 

And this nature (assisted, indeed, by the graces 
of supernatural gifts) — the very same nature which 
Adam enjoyed, liable to the same temptations, and 
actually tried by (though victorious over) the same 
temptations, — this nature it was that our Blessed 
Lord took upon Him. He condescended to become 
man, took upon Him flesh, and thus realizing while 
resisting the tendencies to which this fleshly frame is 
liable, could sympathize with the frail beings who 
tabernacled in it. Moreover, as He bore our nature, 
so He felt Himself in a manner involved in the sin 
done in our flesh. Our flesh was His Flesh. He 
felt His brotherhood to man to the full. He carried 
about with Him a nature over whose degradation, as 
personally involved in it, He mourned, — the extent 
of the sinfulness of which He could more than any 
other deplore, because His own perfect innocence 



60 JESUS THE JUSTIFIER [SERM. 

enabled Him by the most painful contrast to know 
and realize that sinfulness better than any other. 
He Himself, then, Who so mourned over our sins, 
Whose whole life was nothing but a series of humili- 
ating acts done by Him as though standing in place 
of a penitent world, — He surely, we may not doubt, 
possesses every sympathy which can induce the 
penitent to lean on Him with confidence and hope. 
Thus contemplated, under an aspect of such abun- 
dant love and graciousness, He offers to the sinner, 
in His Own Person, the most awakening motives to 
penitence. It is thus, my brethren, we would now 
represent the Lord Jesus to your thoughts. 

Pass we,, then, from the consideration of Mary 
Magdalene's perfect repentance, to see the fruits of 
it in Christ's forgiveness. What her deeds of 
penitence have been we have seen. His mercies in 
every way correspond to them ; nay, even exceed 
the degree of acknowledgment her grateful act seems 
to demand. However persuasive the repentance of 
Magdalene may be, yet we cannot behold the picture 
of love and mercy presented by our Saviour in the 
scene which we are about to contemplate, without 
acknowledging that in persuasiveness this latter is 
far more constraining, as a motive, than the former 
as an example, to urge us to contrition for our sins. 
When we look upon the sinner, graciously en- 
couraged to lift up a countenance in which the light 
of hope is struggling through the tears of penitence ; 
when we see a love holy and ardent responded to 
from the Fount of Love ; when we regard in the 



IV.] OF THE PENITENT. 61 

Teacher of a severe and searching morality the Pro- 
tector of one in the eyes of the world infamous and 
immoral, where shall we look for stronger and 
more engaging motives to seek the Saviour of our 
lost souls in the most heartfelt contrition for sin ? 

Where shall we begin in setting forth the gra- 
ciousness of the Lord to the returning Magdalene ? 
Because He before knew her purpose, and that 
she would come to be healed and seek the waters 
of reconciliation, therefore Christ accepted the 
Pharisee's invitation. Whence S. Chrysostom says, 1 
" Christ sat at the table, not in order to delight in 
cups flavoured with honey, odorous with the essence 
of flowers, but to drink the tears of a penitent from 
the very fountains of her eyes." But strange — at 
first our Lord is silent, regardless apparently of the 
weeping Magdalene, notwithstanding all her endea- 
vour to elicit His compassion. And all the while, 
that Pharisee's unsympathizing eye was looking 
upon her in coldness. His mind was pronouncing 
her that castaway, which his mouth was unwilling, 
from friendship for her brother, and perhaps good- 
will to herself and sister for many neighbourly 
services, to declare. And well she divined his 
thoughts, that had she done such an act for his feet, 
he would have been sure to say, " Depart from me, 
for I am clean." 2 Two circumstances enough to 

1 S. Chrys. Serm. 93. 

2 S. Augustine, Sermons on New Test., Vol. I., 388, Lib. of 
Fathers. 



62 JESUS THE JUSTIFIER [SERM. 

dishearten Magdalene, and disturb her confidence in 
the propriety of the step she had taken. Had then 
her sanguine hopes of remission of sins been ill- 
founded ? was she to be thrown back again upon 
herself, and was there to be no Saviour for her ? 
That was a long anxious time to her which was oc- 
cupied in the Pharisee's thoughts and the Saviour's 
rebuke. Her fate was in suspense, and all had been 
hazarded on one cast. Eagerly did she listen to our 
Saviour's words, as He began to say, " Simon, I have 
somewhat to say to thee." And thus she heard 
(though solicitous all the while as to what might be 
its issue) the defence Jesus set up for her. " ' There 
was a certain creditor which had two debtors ; the 
one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. 
And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly for- 
gave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which will love 
him most.' Simon answered and said, ' I suppose 
that he to whom he forgave most;' and He said 
unto him, ' Thou hast rightly judged.' " And now, 
availing Himself of Simon's answer, our Saviour 
remarks upon all the points of Mary's penitence with 
the most minute accuracy. He had done violence to 
Himself in remaining so long silent; but now, in 
an ample manner, He makes a deliberate and open 
defence of her, in no way afraid of injuring the sacred 
cause of the Gospel by attaching persons thereto in 
the eyes of the then religious world, of scandalous re- 
putation. Simon appears to have been at the time 
of which we are speaking, one of that w< er kind of 



IV.] OF THE PENITENT. 63 

converts, of which Jesus must have attached to 
Himself not a few ; one who, while his convictions 
led him to the Saviour, was yet constantly drawn by 
his position in life to attach no small importance to 
the adverse opinions of the Jewish rulers ; one, con- 
sequently, who could afford to take no decided steps, 
and who therefore while partly adhering to Jesus, as 
fully entertaining the possibility of His being the 
Messiah, had yet not the courage so to commit 
himself to His cause as to sacrifice his standing in 
the great Jewish sect of the day. Hence, he was 
afraid of showing too great an interest in Him ; he 
was not unwilling that it should be known 
abroad that he had shown civility to One Who was 
making no small stir in his part of the country ; but 
then he took care to be able to say at any future 
time, that his reception of Him did not include every 
attention which distinguished guests and equals 
might with good reason expect. Together with feel- 
ings of this kind towards our Saviour, he naturally 
retained all the distinctive characteristics of his sect 
towards those who were without, the publican and 
the sinner, and even such as he might think had 
transgressed against, though not suffered the penalty 
of, their law. " This Man," he said within himself, 
" if He were a prophet, would have known who, and 
what manner of woman this is that toucheth Him, 
for she is a sinner." " You deceive yourself," says S. 
Chrysostom, 1 " it is in that He is a prophet, that He 
1 Quoted by Cheminais, i. 78. 



64 JESUS THE JUSTIFIER [SERM. 

suffers her, and that He graciously accepts the sa- 
crifice of her tears. If He were not a prophet He 
would have only known her as you by the noise she 
has made in the city. He would fear lest her con- 
duct for the future should render her unworthy of 
His protection, and He dishonour Himself in an- 
swering for the morals of a person of whom it is 
more natural to expect a relapse into sin than per- 
severance in godliness. Because He is a prophet 
and has probed the depth and sincerity of her repent- 
ance, and thoroughly discerns the rectitude of her 
intentions, He views her no longer as Magdalene 
the sinner, but knows her as Magdalene the penitent. " 
And conceive now her joy as, turning to her, at 
length our Lord said, " ' Seest thou this woman,' 
this woman above whom thou art accounting thyself 
the more worthy ? Granted," He says, " you should 
be able to show yourself what you think you are, 
so much less sinful than this woman, — granted, that 
your life and conversation is as you will tell Me, 
purer, — that you are righteous above her in the pro- 
portion of live hundred to fifty, yet you must be 
prepared to justify yourself before God by yet an- 
other standard than the one by which you reckon. 
Tell Me something as to the degree in which you 
love God ; for an obedience to God's commands, as 
it may be only an apparent and not a real internal 
obedience of the heart, is not always the safest cri- 
terion of a state of justification before God. Tell 
Me who will love most, one who has been forgiven 



IV.] OF THE PENITENT. 65 

a debt of five hundred or a debt of fifty pieces of 
money ?" And thus out of his own mouth He con- 
demns him ; for as Simon answered and said, " I 
suppose that he to whom he forgave most," the 
Lord accepted his words. " Thou hast rightly 
judged." " He who best can realize the greatness of 
his debt to Almighty God, — he who abandoning the 
consideration of his petty righteousnesses can bury 
himself in the abyss of his own unworthiness, and 
clearly discern the altogether unmerited mercies of 
God, he will best love Him. For here in the saints 
of God do meet in one the most wonderful holiness, 
the most thorough self-abasement." 

Then continuing His address, " Seest thou this wo- 
man, O Simon ! this woman of so evil a reputation ? 
Consider her well ; for thou mayest compare thyself 
with her in the point of love to God to thy great ad- 
vantage. I entered into thy house. It was at thine own 
desire : thou hadst progressed so far in belief of My 
claims as to beg that I would come under thy roof. I 
entered not as a mere guest — not even as a mere pro- 
phet — but as the Greatest Teacher My Father has 
yet sent upon earth : naturally, therefore, did I ex- 
pect the attentions which were suitable to the dignity 
of a more than ordinary guest. From thee, Simon, a 
Pharisee, I receive them not ; but from this woman a 
sinner. 1 Thou gavest Me no water for My feet, which, 
as it is a common custom among us, would have been 
no excess of courtesy, even to a more ordinary guest 
1 Bp. Hall, Book IV., Cont. xvi. 
F 



66 JESUS THE JUSTIFIER [SERM. 

than I am. But see this woman's love to God. 
She hath done more than give Me water. She hath 
washed My feet ; yea, and not with mere water, but 
with the precious pearls of repentant tears ; and see, 
she hath wiped them, not with a towel, but with the 
sweet sacrificial offering of her offending hair. 
Thou gavest Me no kiss, no kiss of love and wel- 
come, such by which guests are commonly distin- 
guished j 1 but since she hath come, she hath not 
ceased to kiss even My feet ; showing, Simon, with 
how lowly, teachable a spirit she is willing to receive 
that doctrine from on high, which, from the poverty 
of thy love to Almighty God, thou canst not as yet 
receive. And once more, My head with oil, even of 
the commonest, thou didst not anoint ; but she hath 
not scrupled to consume her most costly unguents 
even upon My feet. Simon, Simon ! by how much 
thy love has failed towards thy neighbour ; by so 
much has Magdalene's abounded towards God. 
Thou dost not feel that thou art a debtor; but 
what hast thou which thou hast not received ? Wilt 
thou tell Me thy errors are less than those of Mag- 
dalene ? but by Whose grace is it they are less ? 
Wherefore know that recognizing not that thou art 
altogether a debtor to God, thou art the sinner ; 
Magdalene the righteous. If thou wilt not read the 
Holy Scriptures aright, and learn with the holiest 
saints to confess thyself as nothing before God ; if 
thou wilt not, with David, confess thyself ' a worm 
1 See Appendix. 



IV.] OF THE PENITENT. 67 

and no man ;' if thou wilt not with Samuel declare 
thyself 'a dead dog;' but wilt say 'I am not as 
other men are, or as this publican;' then, whatever 
may be the purity of thy life and conversation, thy 
self-righteousness so effaces what is otherwise good 
in thee, that thou standest not upright in the sight 
of God. Open thine eyes then to the true extent 
of thy debt. Know that I come not to call the 
righteous, those who account themselves such, but 
' sinners to repentance,' those who realizing to 
themselves the frightfulness and detestable nature 
of all sin whatsoever, and making every effort to 
shun it, are the truly righteous." 1 

And now our Saviour comes to the last act of 
graciousness — " the absolution of sins." Jesus, in 
the exercise of that power which He afterwards, 
during His forty days' converse, after His resurrection, 
with His disciples, bestowed solemnly upon them, 
now proceeded to pronounce the remission of the sins 
of Magdalene. "And He said unto her, Thy sins are 
forgiven." This was to bestow, not indeed so great 
a blessing as removed in her the corrupt workings 
and effects of sin springing out of our fallen nature 
and such as served to separate her entirely from 
the necessity of all further probation ; but such a 
forgiveness as that which the Church has been com- 
missioned to pronounce over the penitent — a renewal 
of God's favour so that once again He may treat with 
him as a son, and a bringing back of the penitent 
1 See Appendix. 
F 2 



68 JESUS THE JUSTIFIER [SERM. 

into the state of salvation by once again restoring to 
him the channels of grace. " This woman," saith S. 
Augustine, " who believed that she could be forgiven 
by Christ, believed Christ not to be Man only, 
but God also. # * He Who saw them at the table, 
heard their thoughts, and turning to the woman, 
He said, ' Thy faith hath made thee whole. Let 
them who say, Who is this that forgive th sins also ? 
who think Me to be but a man, think Me but a man. 
For thee thy faith hath made thee whole.' "- 1 

Should not, my brethren, so loving an example as 
the one now set before you, awaken your souls to 
faith in Christ, and to commit all your ways to 
Him ? We here see that every surrender of our- 
selves to His blessed will — every sacrifice of our 
hands will meet with more than its due reward. 
Have we wasted the talents committed by our 
Heavenly Father to our thrifty usury in riotous 
living ? He is ready on our penitent returning to 
come forth and embrace us, with the encouraging 
sound, "This My son was dead, and is alive again; 
he was lost, and is found." Are we as sheep who 
have wandered from the true fold, and fallen into 
the dismal regions of heresy ; or does self-seeking 
and the pride of intellect threaten to mislead us 
from the old paths ? He is the Good Shepherd 
equally ready to go forth and restore the wanderer 
to the true fold, as to retain with gentle violence the 

1 S. Aug. Serm. on New Test. Vol. I., 392, 393. Lib. of 
Fathers. 



IV.] OF THE PENITENT. 69 

impatient spirit which would seek pastures of its 
own choosing. 

Does the world frown on our labours of love for 
Christ's sake? Our Saviour sets up a defence 
for us as He did for Magdalene. Whom the 
world despises He shields and defends against 
calumny and misconstruction of motive, not once 
merely, but many times ; as on other occasions be- 
sides this, He defended Magdalene, once against her 
sister Martha, and again against the complaint of 
Judas : so that our love shall meet with constant 
and abundant returns. So true is it that the sinner 
never makes any single step towards returning to 
God, but God responds to his smallest advances — 
"Return unto Me, and I will return unto you," 
saith the Lord of Hosts. 1 

We have thus, then, in this and the last discourse, 
set before you, on the one hand, Mary's heroical 
self-abandonment, on the other, Christ's loving 
sympathy with the penitent — at once the model of 
and the motive to a perfect repentance. What hin- 
ders us then, when so lovingly invited, in our free 
approach to Christ? 

Is it because many of us are like Simon at this 
period of his conversion, and we cannot realize in 
ourselves that oppressive feeling of sinfulness and 
unworthiness which would make us run for forgive- 
ness to God — which would make us so to overflow 
with love as to do, as it were spontaneously, the 
1 Mai. iii. 7. 



70 JESUS THE JUSTIFIER [SERM. 

works most pleasing to Him? We, for the most 
part, content ourselves with such external indications 
of acceptableness with God as our mere works of 
obedience afford to us : and we rather build upon 
their sufficiency in a general and unscrutinizing way, 
than enter into a minute examination of the motives 
which actuate us in their performance. We are 
honourable, upright — we attend to religious duties, 
we are far from uncharitable. But so was Simon. 
Simon seems to have been what surely the best of 
us must consider a very estimable character, when 
compared with the great bulk of mankind, and yet 
we see he meets with a severe rebuke from our 
Lord. 

Now what is there that we see in ourselves from 
which we may presume that we are not in the like 
evil case ? Are we so confident that we have not 
the Pharisaic spirit of a Simon ? Could we with a 
comfortable assurance meet our Lord, should it be 
His will at this present to summon us into His pre- 
sence and pass sentence upon us as He did upon 
Simon ? What should we have to answer did He 
begin by contrasting our degrees of love with the 
fervent outpouring of affection exhibited in the de- 
votedness of some despised Magdalene ? Let us think 
how much or little " water" we have given for His 
feet, the humble and distressed members of His 
Church 1 — how often we have kissed them, nourished, 
fostered them for His sake, — how diligently we have 
1 Bishop Hall, Contemplations, Book IV., Cont. xvi. 



IV.] OF THE PENITENT. 71 

wiped them with the hairs of our head ; how often, 
that is, we have made sacrifices of our superfluous 
and vain possessions ; and if we shall satisfy our- 
selves that we have not been neglectful of these 
Christian duties, suppose yet that after all we shall 
find that with Simon, though doing the works of 
Magdalene, we love but little. What would the 
Lord say to us? Would He not say, "To whom 
much is forgiven, the same loveth much?" 

Where then is our defect of heart ? Why, in wrap- 
ping up ourselves in our own righteousness — in con- 
ceiving that little has been forgiven us. Christians 
cannot make comparisons, and think that little has 
been forgiven them. Let us at once endeavour to 
realize our true debt of love to God by pondering 
over the exceeding riches of His mercies to us. If 
we enter aright upon this work we shall soon see 
ample results in the easy movement of the wheels of 
our affections towards such works as He most loves. 

But will you say in your inmost hearts that you 
hope that your spirit is now all unlike Simon's, — that 
your heart of pride is broken within you, — that you 
do not surprise yourself in making invidious com- 
parisons and setting store by yourself, — that you do 
reflect on God's mercies and your great debt ; and 
yet that you cannot find in yourself the self-sacri- 
ficing mind which distinguishes Magdalene, and that 
you fear that your penitence partakes in no degree of 
the depth and intensity which belongs to hers? 
Well, but this is in itself no mean proof of love — that 



72 JESUS THE JUSTIFIER [SERM. 

you have abandoned self-righteousness and are re- 
flecting upon God. Thus far a blessing has attended 
your repentance ; and as for further advances in holi- 
ness, the times of God's grace are in His own hands. 
His comforting assurances are not for every kind of 
penitent, at all times ; to some they might engender 
spiritual pride, to others a false security. We are 
not to look for the same issues to attend each of our 
separate meditations as were the result of Magda- 
lene's. In her case we see a large reward, an 
abounding grace ; l but we cannot count the degree 
of intensity with which she prosecuted her peniten- 
tial meditations, or make any such comparisons with 
her and other penitents which would enable us to 
say in our individual case that the amount of peni- 
tence we exhibit ought to produce such and such a 
definite result. Let us wait, then, with patience the 
Lord's appointed time, and persevere to the end. 
Sufficient for us if we can ever hear with any degrees 
of comfort and assurance the w^ords " Thy sins are 
forgiven thee." "Let every soul," says S. Augus- 
tine, " which is to be delivered from her manifold 
wickedness by the grace of the Lord, to be cleansed 
as it were in the Church from her filthy prostitution, 
believe with all assurance, approach the feet of the 
Lord, seek His footsteps, confess in pouring out 
tears upon them and wipe them with her hair. The 
feet of the Lord are the preachers of the Gospel." 2 

1 See Appendix. 

2 S. Aug. Horn, on New Test., Vol. I., Serai. XLIX. 13. 



IV.] OF THE PENITENT. 73 

And this too agrees with what has been said before, 
that the feet are the humble members of Christ : 
for does not our Lord say " Whosoever of you will 
be the chiefest, shall be servant of all?" With 
Mary Magdalene let us ever be seeking the feet of 
Christ — anointing Him in His ministry and His 
poor, His special lot. In so doing we may oft hear 
our Lord conveying home to our souls in secret 
accents the tender assurance " Thy sins are for- 
given, thy faith hath made thee whole." And now 
again with the words of S. Augustine I conclude ; 
and let us all in the spirit of true penitents hear : " Let 
her wipe the feet with her hair, yea, by all means 
wipe them, let her do works of mercy ; and when she 
has wiped them, let her kiss them, let her receive 
peace, that she may have love. She has [perchance] 
approached to such an one, has been baptized by 
such an one as the Apostle Paul : from him let her 
hear, ' Be ye followers of me, even as also I am of 
Christ.' But she has been baptized [it may be] by 
another, by one who seeks his own things, not the 
things which are Jesus Christ's : let her hear from 
the Lord, ' Do what they say, but do not what they 
do.' So let her assurance be in Him, whether she 
meet with a good Evangelist, or with one who acts 
not as he speaks. For she hears from the Lord 
with firm assurance, ' O woman, go thy way, thy 
faith hath made thee whole.' "* 

1 S. Aug. Horn, on New Test., Vol. I., Serm. XLIX. 13. Lib. 
of Fathers. 



SERMON V. 

THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES, 



S. Luke x. 41, 42. 



And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, 
Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many 
things : but one thing is needful, and mary hath 
chosen that good part which shall not be taken 
away from her. 

How great is the difference of feeling we find in our- 
selves in the more advanced stages of a conversion 
to God, and in its early beginnings. At the first 
outset of our renewal of heart, there has been, to- 
gether with the freshest feelings of love to God and 
good will to man, a tide of such tumultuous emotions 
as have prevented our discerning correctly the pro- 
per character of the many new objects that meet our 
spiritual eye. Though the workings of the Spirit 
of God within us so restrain the motions of our 
fleshly mind as to preserve us on the whole free 
from the greater errors of thought and action, at 
least in the purpose of our hearts ; yet the compara- 
tive obscurity of our vision, as though a misty haze 



76 THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. [SERM. 

were before our eyes, denies us all steady sight and 
pursuit of our ultimate end. Up to this time we 
are, as was the blind man whom Jesus restored to 
sight ; and who first saw men so indistinctly, that 
they seemed " as trees walking. " Something, in- 
deed we are, at such a time, willing to do. Our 
hearts swell with great and good purposes. We 
strain after some conception of a holy life; and long 
to realize thoughts as yet too vague to mould into 
shape. Indeed, we yearn for we hardly know what ; 
till, at length, becoming more familiarized with the 
novel objects which meet our view in the spiritual 
world, more skilled in the use of the new faculty 
.which enables us to discern them, the veil is with- 
drawn from before our eyes ; and what before our 
minds only imperfectly imaged that they now per- 
fectly realize. The Holy Spirit with His gracious 
influences asserts His quiet dominion, and reducing 
the chaos of the soul to order, illumines with a clear 
and steady light the whole man, and brings about 
that holy calm and intense fervour of which He is 
always the source in the heart of the devoted disciple 
of Christ. 

Thus it was with S. Mary Magdalene at the period 
to which we are now about to bring her history. 
No longer do we find her kneeling at the Saviour's 
feet with the anguished spirit of a suppliant ; but 
now " sitting" at His feet, there to receive in holy 
calm His Divine instructions — indeed, in such calm 
as results from any person's knowing assuredly the 



V.] THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. 77 

undoubted end of a business on which he is intent. 
She was no longer in any degree unsettled in mind or 
purpose ; for, from our Lord's words, we may safely 
conclude that she had now fully committed herself 
to some definite course of life. 

And this we may gather, from her subsequent 
history, to have been the entire devotion of herself 
to religious duties near the Sacred Person of our 
Lord. It is this fact which enables us to account 
for Martha's absence in many scenes described in 
the Gospels, at which Mary Magdalene, following 
the dictates of her more fervent spirit and the obli- 
gations of her choice of life, is present. 

And we may also not unreasonably conclude that 
she had been the means of persuading her sister 
Martha and brother Lazarus to belief in Jesus : and 
further that, like herself, Martha had taken up a 
settled line of duty. This last is a thought sug- 
gested by the words of our Saviour, Who represents 
Martha as also having a part as well as Mary. Her 
part embraced " many things," and with this He 
contrasts Mary's choice, consisting of one single 
object, the "one thing needful." Now, to make 
the contrast perfect, Martha's acceptance of the 
"many things" her part must have been, no less 
than Mary's, her voluntary act, — embraced at least 
with the affections, if not by an act of positive voli- 
tion. As Mary's praise consisted in having chosen 
her part in life, so Martha could not have been 
humbled by the higher merit of her sister's choice, 



78 THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. [SERM. 

had she not, too, in some sense, chosen her way of 
serving God. 1 

Now the difference in the parts selected by these 
two converts is the very point to which the text 
invites our attention. It would seem that Martha was 
the elder sister ; 2 and therefore, as the mistress of her 
brother's house, the duty of hospitably entertaining 
Christ would properly devolve upon her. We are 
the more anxious to establish this point, as it helps 
us to the belief that Martha being the elder was not 
out of place in her endeavours for Christ's enter- 
tainment ; and that she could not well have partici- 
pated in the privileges which Mary enjoyed of sitting 
at Christ's feet without a breach of duty. 3 In this 
manner, therefore, by showing the piety of her 
action, and, as far as on this head is concerned, 
exonerating her from all blame, we shall be enabled 
more clearly to understand what indeed it was which 
brought on her Christ's rebuke, and, moreover, 
on what principle His preference was given to 
Mary's conduct. 

And first let us notice in the very place from 
which our text is taken these words, — " And a cer- 
tain woman named Martha received Him into her 
house," where Martha appears to be mentioned as 
the mistress, if not the proprietor, of the house. 
It is to be confessed, indeed, that, in the first verse 
of the eleventh chapter of S. John, Mary is men- 

1 See Appendix. 2 Bp. Hall, Book IV., Cont. xvii. 

3 See Appendix. 



V.] THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. 79 

tioned first, " Bethany, the town of Mary and 
Martha : " but in this place, from her being the 
prominently religious character of the two sisters, 
and from the mention he is about to make of her in 
the second verse, we might naturally expect to 
find her coming first in order in the Evangelist's 
thoughts. In the fifth verse, however, we have — 
" Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and 
Lazarus ;" and again, in the nineteenth verse, " And 
many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary," this 
being the natural order, as it would appear, of their 
birth. In the twentieth, too, we find that Martha, 
as would be natural to the mistress of the house, 
" as soon as she heard Jesus was coming, went and 
met Him/' while "Mary sat still in the house." 

Besides this, we shall do well to trace out those 
qualities in Martha which had gained for her, no 
less than for her sister, our Saviour's love. And 
first, she had, regardless of the Jews, plainly com- 
mitted herself a disciple to His cause ; and this was 
no mean act of faith. And next, her anxiety that 
He should be suitably entertained, as in the 
present instance, gains for her the praise of that 
virtue which " lodging strangers, sometimes en- 
tertaineth Angels unawares." 1 Then we may ob- 
serve the great faith evinced by her, in common 
with her sister, in sending unto Christ w T hen Laza- 
rus was dying. For they go not to Him them- 
selves ; but in confidence of His at once perfect love 

1 See Appendix. 



80 THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. [SERM. 

and perfect power wait the issue of their message 
to Him in Lazarus's sick chamber. And this faith 
is no less shown in the words of their message, 
" Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick." 
They say no more, not dictating to Him their 
wishes ; as though it were sufficient that Jesus 
should know the state Lazarus was in to provide 
sufficiently against it. These are no slight proofs 
of the sincerity of Martha's convictions. Further, 
her eagerness in going forth to meet Christ, and 
her declaration, " Lord, if Thou hadst been here, 
my brother had not died ;" and her intimation of 
belief in His all-sufficiency, " But I know that even 
now, whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give 
it Thee ;" — these exhibited a very remarkable degree 
of faith in the Son of God. Although amounting 
to a less perfect belief than the w 7 ords themselves 
convey, as is seen by what she says subsequently, 
and by her involuntary exclamation, " Lord, by 
this time he stinketh," her faith was yet sufficiently 
strong to enable our Lord to proceed in the great 
work of restoring the earthly life of the dead without 
injurious consequences to the spiritual life of the 
living. " Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest 
believe, thou shalt see the glory of God ?" are words 
which, while they intimate a less perfect faith in 
Martha, yet admit the existence of it in such a 
degree as to render her not unworthy of the sight of 
the miracles of God. 

It w T as then a person of such considerable piety 



V.] THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. 81 

as we have shown, (a person 1 who in one branch 
of the Christian Church has a day set apart to com- 
memorate her sanctity) of whom the Gospel says, 
she "was cumbered about much serving," and who 
came to Christ and said, " Lord, dost Thou not 
care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?" 
Her feeling was most natural. Mary was the younger 
and yet she took the liberty of ease which Martha 
might think, if belonging to any, were the right of 
the elder. To her mind, the act of Mary was no 
less wanting in regard to herself, wearied as she was 
with her numerous labours, than in respect for that 
Lord and Saviour for Whom they were incurred. 2 
It was even to such a person as we have described 
that our Lord said " Martha, Martha !" (redoubling 
the word with mingled affection and reproof) " thy 
sister does well, and whereas thou art careful and 
troubled about many things ; but one thing is need- 
ful, and Mary hath chosen that good part, which 
shall not be taken away from her." He finds fault 
with Martha, and commends Mary ; but not in the 
same things. He does not find fault with Martha 
because she is careful and troubled about many 
things ; but rather because she would involve her 
sister in those many labours 3 to which her own time 
was devoted, requiring her to undertake them in 

1 See Appendix. 

2 Bishop Hall, Bk. IV. Cont. xvii., for which see note on p. 78 
in Appendix. 

3 See Appendix. 

G 



82 THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. [SERM. 

conjunction with herself, in preference to the proper 
duties of her vocation. Hence therefore He brings 
a charge against her, as indulging against her sister a 
feeling of which her present complaint might perhaps 
be only one instance out of many. " You do wrong," 
He would seem to say, " as thinking little of her vo- 
cation : you should rather bring yourself to think 
that your sister's habits of thought are more agreeable 
than your own with the mind of God. Pursuing the 
bent of her mind, she is so absorbed in her love of 
the word of God that all other considerations have 
been swallowed up in this one ; but this you think 
an unfruitful way of pursuing holiness. Consider, 
however, that after all that may be said in favour of 
providing for the necessities of families, the neces- 
sary time that is consumed in all duties of domestic 
life, we must yet be enabled, if we would secure our 
salvation, so to live as to rise above, — to keep our- 
selves detached from them ; and this you find con- 
fessedly a most difficult work. Mary's portion, 
however, is in a great measure freed from the snares 
which beset yours ; and in a great measure secures 
the advantages which your position denies." 1 

"But what if, indeed, she have been in this instance 
somewhat inconsiderate and have forgotten your hos- 
pitable anxieties on My behalf ; yet tell me, which is 
better, that there should be some excess in seeking the 
things of heaven or some excess in being cumbered 
with much serving ? But there is yet something more 
1 See Appendix. 



V.] THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. 83 

to be said. For this way of serving God she has delibe- 
rately made choice of. And yours too is your own 
choice. For though, as the elder sister, household cares 
have rightfully devolved upon you ; yet you are well 
aware that they are labours congenial to your tastes 
and feelings. What she does now is but a sample of 
the whole character of her spiritual life as contrasted 
with the general tone and temper of yours." 

" But further consider this, that ' she hath chosen 
that good part which shall not be taken away from 
her.' That which is the ordinary pursuit of your 
life, that shall be taken away from you. That you 
should be busied in holy works about My Person, or 
in behalf of My disciples, this is indeed well ; but 
you must remember, these are not the ends for 
which you live. In My Father's house I shall not 
be, as here I am allowed to be, in much need. Nei- 
ther for Myself nor My disciples shall I require the 
alms and ministrations of My followers, yea rather, 
' I shall gird Myself and make them sit down to 
meat and come forth and serve them.' 1 But what 
Mary has chosen, the lot which as well her heart 
approves as Providence has marked out for the 
course of her life, this is the proper work of heaven, 
the constant thought of God, 2 that stay of the soul." 

The lesson to be drawn from this part of Scrip- 
ture is one that requires some discrimination on the 
part of him who attempts to embrace it. There is 
so much that seemingly almost invites misconstruc- 
1 See Appendix. 2 See Appendix. 

g2 



84 THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES, [SERM. 

tion that it reminds us of our Lord's words, " All 
men cannot receive this saying save they to whom 
it is given." There is a temptation on the part of 
one kind of Christian disciple to say, " If this be 
true we should have to forsake at once our house- 
hold duties and the common calls of this life on our 
time and labour ; and if all were employed in con- 
stant prayer and meditation how then would the 
world go on ?" And hence it is that such persons 
are under a perpetual temptation to lower the sacred 
words of Holy Writ to that standard which their 
own notions of piety suggest. And again, there is 
a temptation on the part of another kind of dis- 
ciple to abandon, without call from God, the 
duties of this life and to indulge in some fond con- 
ceit of an ill-regulated mind for a life of religious 
retirement. 

These are the dangers to those who, with an un- 
spiritual habit of soul, would attempt to solve the 
mysteries of this text. But the benefits, derived 
from the devout thought upon it of the faithful, 
cannot but be productive of a great good. 

And first, we find, in the example of these two 
sisters, a strong motive to all of us for adopting 
fixedly, with earnest prayer to God for the accom- 
plishing oar purposes, a particular course of life. 
Both chose their part ; and both, if we may repose any 
confidence in the somewhat modern traditions 1 which 
exist concerning them, in their respective degrees at- 
1 See Appendix. 



V.] THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. 85 

tained to eminent sanctity, one by works of holiness 
and a life of active religious duties ; the other by her 
prayers became a mighty intercessor with God for the 
safety of His Sion. And this principle of determining 
our vocation is one of no mean importance. If, 
marked out before us, we have a course of duties 
which, with a certain moral conviction of the soul, we 
know ourselves by the Providence of God called to 
fulfil, with how much better hope of success, — with 
how much less anxiety for the issue, shall we prose- 
cute our labours for Christ's sake ? Can we, with any 
confidence, go forth to the encounter, if, uncertain as 
to what is our proper sphere of spiritual duty — now 
adopting one line of obedience, now shifting to an- 
other, we venture to do battle against our great 
adversary Satan? 

Next, let us consider, that though Martha's part 
has been shown to be a good one, yet Mary's is the 
better. If we were engaged, for the first time, in 
making choice of a path of life, and that choice lay 
between duties favourable the one to the active the 
other to the contemplative life, our choice might be 
determined perhaps by the vigour of the spiritual 
life within us ; or perhaps by the peculiar circum- 
stances of the Church at the time. As for instance, we 
should not devote ourselves to a line of duties of the 
contemplative character, if we found our spirituality 
too low to respond to such a state of life ; nor, as it 
would seem, should we engage upon such a life, if 
the welfare of Christ's Church (it being either in 



86 THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. [SERM. 

persecution, or in an incipient, or in a reforming 
state), rather demand of us lives of activity. Yet, 
these things duly allowed for, Mary's part is essen- 
tially the better. A life spent in much prayer, in much 
praise, in pondering the words of Christ in our 
hearts, — a life of which these form the highest and 
first considerations, and regulate our more active exer- 
tions, — this is surely "that one thing needful ,, of 
which Christ here speaks. It is a life ruled through- 
out by an intenser love, — that " more excellent way" 1 
of which S. Paul speaks when contrasting " charity " 
with "the best gifts"; the highest and crowning, with 
every subordinate principle. This is the " one thing 
needful," for it is the direct business of heaven. We 
know, indeed, little of heaven, save that there, night 
and day, hallelujahs are hymned to the praise of the 
Most High ; and that there we shall meet with Him 
to Whom all our contemplations and aspirations are 
directed in this life. A spirit fully attuned to such 
spiritual joys and exercises possesses " the one thing 
needful," and there is "no taking this away." It is 
the only true possession of any man on this side the 
grave. The more we lead this unearthly life, if duly 
called to it, the more are we fitted to inhabit the 
mansions prepared for us in heaven. How many 
things which here, as employments, have seemed 
most desirable, nay most requisite, will fail us there. 
Even that which we set most store by, at this pre- 
sent, as most acceptable to God, the active religious 

1 1 Cor. xi. 13. 



V.] THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. 87 

duties, even these will fail. There, are no sick whom 
we may visit, no busy works of untiring benevolence 
in behalf of Christ's poor, no schools to superin- 
tend, no hospitals or churches to build or endow. 
Let it not be supposed, however, that we are advo- 
cating a life in which nothing but religious worship 
is to be pursued as the higher way, or would repre- 
sent Martha's part as one which comprehends in it 
nothing but active employment. What we commend 
so highly in the first is that religious duties are made 
the rule of all other action : what in the second 
diminishes our admiration is that the accidents and 
necessities of life are suffered to regulate the fre- 
quency of seasons of devotion. 

Blessed is he then to whom the first is by Divine 
Providence conceded, for to him a greater degree of 
blessedness may result. He is the man on whom 
the Lord bestows the five talents, and by a due 
diligence in preserving and putting them to account 
he attains other five. And if it be urged that " of him 
to whom much is given much will be required," yet 
let it be remembered that those who shrink from a 
position of danger whenever called by Providence to 
encounter it, must run every risk of so falling back as 
that they may hardly hope to attain even the com- 
mon lot of Christ's faithful servants, " the prize of 
our high calling in Christ Jesus." 

Nor is it meant, by anything here said, to be in- 
ferred that the salvation of persons, placed by God 
in the less " excellent way," is less secure than that of 



88 THE ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIVES. 

those who are called to a higher path. If Christ 
speak of one who having five talents given him 
gained other five, so also He speaks of him who 
having two, gained other two. And He Whose pro- 
vidence has so ordered that many of us should be 
found in the less "excellent way" will doubtless 
save us by the less " excellent way." 

While however they to whom God has appointed 
Martha's portion, thus learn to be contented with 
it ; they are yet to embrace that lesson of humility 
which is hereby taught, and frankly to acknowledge 
that theirs indeed is a less " excellent way," and 
ordinarily followed by less glorious results. Above 
all, when assured of the blessing of Martha's por- 
tion, they should be careful to avoid the spirit of 
Martha's complaint against Mary, despising as un- 
profitable and tame the lives of those who, giving 
themselves to prayer without ceasing, come nearest 
to those heights of piety suggested by the model of 
the Gospel. " Continue in prayer, watching in it 
with thanksgiving;" and again, "Teaching and ad- 
monishing one another in psalms and hymns and 
spiritual songs." Again, " Praying always with all 
prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching 
thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for 
all the saints." 



SERMON VI. 

FAITH IN THE CHUKCH UNDER SORROW. 



S. John xi. 32. 



Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw 
Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, 
Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother had 
not died. 

The stage of the Gospel history of S. Mary Mag- 
dalene, at which we arrived in the last discourse, may 
be briefly stated. We represented Mary and her 
sister as having, subsequently to their conversion to 
the religion of Jesus, chosen a definite course of 
holy living, — the one the more active characteristics 
of a holy life, the other its more contemplative 
features. And as this finishes one stage in their 
repentance and conversion, the period of positive 
struggle, before admission to the blessing of peace 
with God — before the mind is made up to its settled 
line of duty, so now we enter upon a period which 
(if not without its great trials) is yet one of serene 
faith and holy love, — fit emblem of that heavenly 
feeling of peace and rest which true religion imparts 
to holy souls. 



90 FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. [SERM. 

And the first point, to which the Gospels draw 
our attention in connexion with these sisters, is their 
conduct on occasion of the sickness and death of 
their brother Lazarus. His sisters sent unto Jesus, 
saying, " Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is 
sick." Observe the faith shown in this message. 
They did not say to Him " Come to us," for they 
knew that His love to them would prompt Him to 
come, if it was fitting that He should come. They 
did not even venture to express a wish that He 
should even say the word and heal their brother, 
where He was. So, indeed, did the Centurion ex- 
press his strong convictions of Christ's power, and 
his faith was commended. The Lord had not seen 
" such faith, — no not in Israel." But, however 
great his belief, theirs exceeded it : for while they 
only said, " Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is 
sick," they secretly intimated a faith in His power and 
will to do for them in respect to Lazarus all that their 
fondest affections towards him could desire. 1 As 
though they said, " It suffices, Lord, that we declare 
to you, although Thou dost already know of it, this 
illness of our brother Lazarus. Come and heal him, 
if so it please Thee ; or heal him where Thou art 
now abiding, if so it shall seem good to Thee ; for 
we know the greatness of Thy power in all places." 
What way more effectual of obtaining their desires, 
than this one so humble, reverent, and confiding ? 

Though, however, this was the message of the 
1 Bishop Hall, Bk. IV. Cont. xxiii. 



VI.] FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. 91 

sisters conjointly, yet the faith it expressed, as we 
shall have occasion to show, was not equally realized 
in both. And we have good reason to conjecture 
that Mary had suggested the most appropriate style 
of address, to which the other, acknowledging her 
superior spiritual discernment, had yielded assent. 
And it would seem probable that to Mary's un- 
shrinking faith, rather than to Martha's less firm and 
constant belief, was granted the resurrection of La- 
zarus from the grave ; for we may notice in this 
connexion how studiously S. John points out that it 
was " that Mary who anointed our Lord's feet, whose 
brother Lazarus was sick ;" as though mentioning 
her, and omitting the other sister of Lazarus, he would 
intimate that this miracle, performed in behalf of the 
two sisters, was in some sort the reward of the 
earnest and constant piety of only one of them. 

With these intimations as to the probable part 
Mary was filling in this remarkable scene, let us 
proceed to examine into the position which Martha 
holds ; and learn that lesson of at once consolation 
and humility which the contrast of her lower degree 
of faith is calculated to teach us when compared with 
the higher standard which her sister's conduct sets 
before us. For whereas we are almost all of us 
obliged to embrace the active life of Martha, we 
learn humility in seeing that there is " a more ex- 
cellent way" — a fife of piety to which we have not 
attained, and probably never may ; while it is no 
small comfort to us to reflect, when a sense of our 



92 FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. [SERM. 

shortcomings in the spiritual life weighs upon our 
spirits, that one sainted person, whom Jesus loved, 
was greatly blessed although labouring under the 
imperfections of a degree of faith and holiness short 
of the highest. In Martha, indeed, was no small 
amount of faith in our Lord. Her mere concur- 
rence with her sister in such a message to Him as 
we have already set forth, is one fact plainly showing 
this. And further, we find her, when Jesus was 
coming towards their house, going forth to meet 
Him, secretly, as well from her sister as from the 
Jews who were mourning with her ; and seemingly 
with the object of making, uninterrupted by their 
presence, that strong declaration of her faith in His 
power to raise Lazarus 1 — " And I know that even 
now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will 
give it Thee." Accordingly, when Jesus said unto 
her " Thy brother shall rise again," Martha replied, 
not as doubting the possibility of her brother's resto- 
ration to her in life; but as it were, inquiringly, 
" I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection 
at the last day," — as if seeking from our Lord's 
mouth some assurance of what she hoped for, an 
explicit declaration that He was willing and able to 
comply with the wishes of her heart that her brother 
might even now be restored to life : for it was a 
great demand that was made upon her belief, since 
her brother was not like the widow of Nain's son 
only just dead, but far gone in corruption. Next, 

1 See Appendix. 



VI.] FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. 93 

when Christ said of Himself, " I am the Resur- 
rection and the Life, belie vest thou this?" she saith 
unto Him, " Yea, Lord ; I believe that Thou art 
the Christ the Son of God Which shall come 
into the world." Upon which words S. Augustin, 
S. Cyril, and S. Hilary comment to this effect, that 
she, internally illuminated by Christ, broke forth 
into a perfect act of faith, and said, " I believe Thee 
to be the Messiah, the True Son of God, and 
therefore God and the First Cause of all resurrection 
and life. I believe, therefore, that Thou being God 
canst raise up and restore to life Lazarus and all the 
dead whomsoever." J If, then, her faith be so great 
as we have shown, in what respect can it suffer by 
a contrast with that of her sister ? And first, in 
answer to this inquiry, let us notice that our Saviour 
did not, although He had sent for her, enter into any 
discourse with her as He had done with Martha ; 
and we may observe that He did not do this, 
although Mary, by giving utterance to the same 
speech as that with which Martha had opened the 
conference, might seem to have provoked a similar 
reply. And this, as it opens to our view a great 
distinction in His manner of treating the sisters, so 
in itself points to the true solution of it. If there is 
observable, in the one case, a careful fostering and 
cultivation of faith, and in the other no such imme- 
diate care manifest, it is surely reasonable to con- 
clude that what was in the former instance needful, 
and therefore shown, was not so in the latter, and 

1 Cornel, a Lap. in loc. 



94 FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. [SERM. 

therefore not shown. Observe, then, in Martha's 
case, what pains our Lord takes to awaken and en- 
courage in her a fuller faith. For, first, she said 
unto Jesus, " Lord, if Thou hadst been here my 
brother had not died." And in this an imperfect 
faith is visible ; yes, though they are the very same 
words which her sister with a perfect faith employed. 
She accuses herself that she did not sooner send a 
messenger to Christ, or certainly grieves in that He 
was not present to restore Lazarus to health • in 
much the same manner that we are filled with 
trouble, if one be afflicted with grievous illness and 
the physician be not near at hand. Herein, then, 
at this time, she fails in that fulness of belief she 
had persuaded herself to give expression to when 
the message was sent to Christ. She, in effect, 
at this present, suffers doubts to invade her mind as 
to His Omniscience and Omnipotence. For had 
her faith reached thus far, she would have believed 
that Christ, although absent, could both have 
known of the death of Lazarus, and also have re- 
stored him to life. 1 

And, in this way of viewing Martha's words in 
contradistinction to the interpretation we put upon 
the same words as spoken by her sister, we are the 
more confirmed, in that both now and on the occa- 
sion of her next speaking, our Saviour, as though 
dissatisfied with the thought of her heart, makes 
answer in language which aims at eliciting from her a 

1 Bp. Horsley and Grotius in D'Oyly and Mant ; and Corn, a 
Lap. in Joannem, cap. xi. vv. 21, 22. 



VI.] FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. 95 

higher faith. Whereas, although Mary used the very 
same words, as no rejoinder is made to her by our 
Lord intimating dissatisfaction with her state of mind, 
we are bound to attribute to her another meaning 
than her sister entertained in using them. Let us, 
then, set forth plainly that interpretation which the 
place seems best to warrant. " Then when Mary 
was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell 
down at His feet," honouring Him with a full wor- 
ship. As Bishop Hall notes " Both the sisters met 
Christ; not both in one posture: Mary is still 
noted as for more passion, so for more devotion ; 
she, that before sat at the feet of Jesus, now falls at 
His feet. That Presence had wont to be familiar to 
her and not without some outward homeliness ; now 
it fetches her upon her knees in an awful veneration ; 
whether out of a reverend acknowledgment of the 
secret excellency and power of Christ, or oat of a 
dumb intimation of that suit concerning her dead 
brother, which she was afraid to utter; the very 
gesture itself was supplicatory/ ' Under the influ- 
ence of this spirit, what meaning could she have had 
but to speak to this effect, "Lord, if Thou hadst 
been here, and I say this not, as though absent, 
Thou couldst not save him ; but if Thou hadst been 
here, Thou Who art life, my brother would not 
have died — Death would not have dared to venture 
into the presence of the Lord of life, and therefore 
1 cannot help wishing Thou hadst been here." 1 
1 " As if death durst not show her face to Him." — Bp. Hall. 



96 FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. [SERM. 

She says no more, expresses no wish, for she resigns 
all now to Him Who as she knows can do all, will 
do all, if all be expedient. 

Whom, then, Martha regards in the main, as the 
Great Prophet That was to come, the All-powerful 
with God, — Mary has in calm assurance determined 
to be Himself God. Thus, again, Martha says, — 
" Whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give 
it Thee." Had her faith been perfect she w T ould 
have sought the gift of life from Him as God, not 
begged Him to make prayer for it, as it were to 
another. And thus it is that Jesus is obliged gra- 
dually to declare to her what He would willingly 
that she had discerned for herself, that in Him exists 
as an inherent power, resurrection and life. Nor 
again must we forget that, notwithstanding her pre- 
vious declaration of faith, however strongly worded, 
Martha a second time falls back into doubt, as our 
Saviour approaches the sepulchre. " Lord, by 
this time," she says, " he stinketh, for he hath been 
dead four days." To which Jesus replies with some 
severity of manner, " Said I not unto thee, that if 
thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory 
of God ?" If thou wouldest believe, therefore, why 
dost thou suffer thy faith to fail ? And it is said 
" then they took away the stone : " as though 
S. John would imply that delay in restoring her 
brother to life had ensued, because of the temporary 
failure of Martha's faith. 

And now let us inquire in what way we may ob- 



VI.] FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. 97 

tain the faith manifested, in their respective degrees, 
by these two sisters in the instance before us, the belief 
in Christ's power to raise Lazarus. The sisters be- 
lieved in the power of Christ to raise to its former life 
a body fallen into corruption. How should we exhibit 
a like faith ? Lazarus represents according to S. Au- 
gustine's 1 teaching, the sinner 2 buried in the habit of 
sin and given over past hope. " Therefore the Lord 
came, unto Whom all things are easy, and there He 
groaned in spirit ; and demonstrated by the loud cry 
He gave, that there was much need of rebuking those 
who continued in the habit of sin. At the loud voice 
of God the chains of the force of habit are broken." 
Again, " Lazarus coming forth from his tomb is a 
soul withdrawing from fleshly lusts, but bound, that 
is to say, not free from the assaults of the flesh, so 
long as he lives in the body." 3 

And if this interpretation be just as regards indi- 
vidual members of the Church, it may be thought 
fully as just in its application to the whole body. 
The condition of this branch of Christ's Church in 
some of the aspects which it presents has been a 
great source of trial to many, and to some a cause 
of stumbling. Underrating or keeping out of sight 
those excellencies which are peculiar to it, they 
seem anxious only to magnify defects inherent, 

1 S. Aug. Serm. xcviii. § 6. De Verb. Evang. Luc. 7. 

2 "Also the Geutiles dead in sins." Lib. Fathers. Short Trea- 
tises, 454. 

3 S. Aug. lib. S3, queest. 65. 

H 



98 FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. [SERM. 

in a greater or less degree, to any Church in a 
militant state, into points of vital and essential 
consequence. They complain of neglected disci- 
pline ; they tell us that to their eyes our Church 
appears to have none of the signs of power which 
should be the proof and witness of its Divine original ; 
that a Church which can admit of so many anomalies, 
of the existence of such contrary doctrine within one 
communion can have but the feeblest pulsations of 
spiritual life within it. But are we indeed so desti- 
tute of comfort ? Let us, with sorrow indeed, but with 
fearless and truthful confidence admit that their com- 
plaint is not without its grounds. Nay we admit that 
things have been even in a far worse condition than 
they are now, and that the pulse of life that beats lan- 
guidly now (if they will have it so) was once so still 
we hardly marked its pulsation at all. But what 
then ? Is it because now we are moving, and begin 
to realize the full length of our journey, and all the 
difficulties of the way, that we are to take up the 
tone of despair and forsake our labour and our hope ? 
What has made that hope desperate now which had 
charms to rouse us from our slumbers at the first ? 
Light were our hearts at early morn, our feet gaily 
sped o'er the enchanted ground of an ever new and 
opening scene ; now that at noon we are so much 
nearer our goal and have the sun's light of experi- 
ence, with its sad and sober shadows of warning, why 
do our brows contract with care, our heads hang 
down, our limbs fail us ? Well may we guess the 



VI.] FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. 99 

cause ! Our work was too holy, our end too good, 
our men too devoted for peaceful laurels. The 
devil cast his arrows of despair among our ranks. 
Some he killed, some he wounded ; but, praise be to 
God ! the many he only aroused to increased watch- 
fulness and caution. 

My Brethren, we are now engaged confessedly 
(all earnest-minded men whatsoever) in the attempt, 
by our prayers and alms-deeds, to prevail with the 
Lord of the Church for an infusion of yet more in- 
vigorating streams of life into that sacred member of 
Himself, through which we were begotten into the 
one body of the Catholic Church. This is no mere 
party cry. Restoration of forgotten truths, a call to 
greater holiness, a yearning for higher privileges is 
indeed, blessed be God ! the cry of all devout men in 
our Church. And if where the celebration of holy 
communion has been, with, alas ! how culpable a 
parsimony of spiritual gifts, doled out to quarterly 
assemblies of the faithful, we now find its monthly 
distribution ; if where those who have received it 
monthly have in some privileged places risen to the 
fervency of primitive devotion and sought its com- 
munication weekly ; if where Church bells have been 
hushed from Lord's day to Lord's day we now find 
them summoning the devout worshippers to daily 
prayer ; if where the spiritual gifts of Confirmation 
have been dispensed but once in three years, they 
are to the great blessing of still increasing flocks of 
catechumens, now held in very many places once in 

h2 



100 FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. [SERM. 

every year ; if in many vast districts of British ter- 
ritory the Church has not hitherto roused herself to 
a practical recognition of the claims of the colonies 
of this country to episcopal superintendence, she 
now does recognize them ; are we to grieve and be 
impatient as though the Lord of Life had been 
slacker in His gifts than the merit of our service 
deserved ? 

If then we are thus beseeching, for fresh streams of 
life, Him Who is the Lord of Life, it is admitted that 
these, while so many signs of renewed vitality, are as 
sure signs also of preceding torpor and a sleep ap- 
proaching to the stillness of death. Such was our past 
melancholy estate, nor are we urgent to prove that we 
have altogether escaped it. After all, the Church was 
but as the spectacle of Lazarus lying in the unpro- 
ductive sleep of the tomb, not unworthy of life, be- 
cause destined under the summons of Christ to rise 
again, only as yet showing no signs of the coming 
resurrection. And are we to fret at sorrow 7 ful dis- 
pensations, and be melancholy because the wheels of 
our progress are delayed by unforeseen and chasten- 
ing accidents ? And are we to be looking round for 
unnatural and suicidal remedies because we find 
ourselves only in a reviving state ? Are we in a 
worse state now than when we were in torpor ? Or 
must a man be either enjoying the utmost vigour of 
life or be absolutely lifeless ? Have we studied the 
works of God to so little purpose ? Have we exa- 
mined the history of man with so little profit ? In 



VI.] FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW, 101 

the page of nature and of man alike, accounts of 
decay and revival cover more space than those of 
perfect life or absolute death. 

Be it then that, as is so frequently objected, the 
king's daughter who is all glorious within is still not 
wont to be poorly clad ivithout ; be it that our 
churches should not present such an uncomely aspect 
as commonly they do present ; be it that none of us 
would be willing to stand at the tribunal of God and 
there affirm that they are now, in their oft dismantled 
and neglected state, a suitable offering of man to the 
Majesty of God ; be it that we seldom see the re- 
quisitions and wishes of our Church carried out in 
the solemn, beautiful and grandly simple worship 
which she has set before her people as the proper 
and adequate representation of her true spirit ; be it 
that what we do see speaks of a depressed rather 
than of an exalted condition becoming the Church of 
this great and understanding people, the voice of 
lamentation and mourning, a neglected aspect, the 
rent garment, but not the voice of a glad mother in 
whose beauty and praises her happy sons exult ; be 
it that though the Marthas and the Marys have 
put forth their best powers to call to their assistance 
Him before Whose Presence death and torpor must 
flee, yet that after all new and shining garments for 
the spouse of Christ have been as yet more in the 
thoughts of men than in the execution, and still her 
robes external are but as grave-clothes ; be it that the 
requirements of our Church's laws she is unable to 
induce her people as yet to comply with ; be it that 



102 FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. [SERM. 

those who are willing in complying with them to 
spend themselves and be spent for their Church 
are hardly allowed to perform that service which 
their dutiful affection prompts ; be it that there are 
those who trample upon her ordinances, despise her 
sacred teaching, and that she does not step forward 
to vindicate the insulted majesty of her own laws ; 
be it too that others there are (alas, how many !) 
whom she would appear as yet unable to retain 
within her fold by motives either of love or of awe ; — 
be it so, and be it that many more such bitter things 
may be cast in our teeth, and with whatever amount 
of truth : what then ? Is affliction and trial a proof 
that God has deserted His people? Is there no 
such thing as a failing truth and a prosperous error ? 
Was the Jewish Church less God's Church when 
the light was so often on the point of being quenched 
in Israel ? Was the less in number the less in hope 
when Juda's children saw themselves deserted by 
the ten tribes of Israel ? Was there not one Church 
of God which had " left her first love " ? 1 one that 
had some which held " the doctrine of Balaam and 
the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes " ? 2 one that suffered 
" that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a pro- 
phetess, to teach and to seduce Christ's servants to 
commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto 
idols"? 3 one so "neither cold nor hot" as to be 
only fit to be " spued out of the Lord's mouth " ? 4 
And did God give even such Churches as these 

1 Rev. ii. 4. 2 Rev. ii. 14, 15. 

3 Rev. ii. 20. 4 Rev. iii. 15, 16. 



VI.] FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. 103 

" space to repent " ; and shall our patience be less 
enduring towards a Church which has ever struggled 
against the admission of error within her bosom, 
with most indignant sorrow ? 1 Great indeed must 
be the amount of error and of corruption in a Church 
which shall justify any of her children in forsaking 
her fold : and great reason have we to mourn over 
the sin of those who could take upon themselves so 
fearful a responsibility. 

But be it our part to wait in silent expectation, 
while, as Lazarus, we remain " bound hand and foot ;" 
a state from which indeed we need relief, — a state 
which calls upon us to sustain our faith amidst the 
many griefs of heart and vexations of spirit which 
constantly perplex and harass, at this present, the 
faithful sons of the Church of England. For has 
not the Lord already come to us in our sorrow ? 
Has He not already wept over us, because with 
Mary and Martha we could not choose but grieve, 
when we saw our beautiful and holy House in ruins ? 
Has He not already cried with a loud voice, " Laza- 
rus, come forth." Before that Gracious Voice how 
many evils have already fled, how much of new 
vigour and hope has its inspiring accents infused 
into us ! We are sensible of sins against the Lord 
to which the eyes of our forefathers were not opened. 
And he that confesseth his sin, when he shall have 
duly bewailed that sin, — yea, in the mercies of God, 
even before, shall be released from that sin. And 
1 See Appendix. 



104 FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. [SERM. 

so in every portion of the English Church has been 
felt, in more or less degree, the beatings of our quick- 
ened pulse of life. Lazarus came forth from the 
tomb, yea, though bound hand and foot with grave- 
clothes, — a miracle in itself. To the wonder of those 
who stood by, he came forth, unassisted by friends, — 
without aid even from his own limbs. And why ? 
because Christ gave the word. And has it not 
been so with us ? Have human weapons been em- 
ployed to revive Church principles in this our day ? 
or rather have we not seen, amidst much diversity 
of thought and little combination among men, a 
simultaneous movement of the Church's mind in one 
settled direction, as though God was moving upon 
the face of the troubled waters of our Sion, and re- 
ducing them to the holy calm of truthfulness and 
order? As though no human power were con- 
cerned in this work, and He had chosen His own 
time, His fiat goes forth and out of chaos springs 
order — out of death life. He hath said, " Out of 
Sion shall God appear in perfect beauty," and who 
shall gainsay His will V 

By enabling myself thus, dear Brethren, to remind 
you that Christ hath already summoned our Church, 
under bonds as she is, to come forth, and hath dis- 
played to her sons tokens, sure and cheering, of her 
secret strength, suffer me to hope that you will be en- 

1 A similar tone of thought, to that which pervades this sermon, 
is pursued throughout Sermon IX. which may be considered as 
the sequel to this. 



VI.] FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. 105 

couraged, with a holy faith, to go on your way rejoic- 
ing — that in the expectation that her bands will in 
good time be loosed and herself let go free, you will 
not suffer yourselves to be disturbed by any scandals 
which may happen within the Church or by the as- 
saults which harass her from without. 1 Away with all 
secret misgivings ! Away with all desponding moody 
thoughts ! They are but the snares of the enemy 
endeavouring to undermine our strength. What 
have we to fear ? The Marys and Marthas amongst 
us have besought the Lord to come to our Church, 
to visit this portion of His vineyard when her hedge 
was broken down and her grapes plucked off. It 
was not then in so bad a condition but He came ; 
but He summoned the husbandmen together ; but 
He strengthened their hearts with new wine ; but 
some of her breaches He repaired : and what though 
He saith not yet " What could have been done more 
to My vineyard that I have not done in it ? " and 
though there is a great work of manifold trials 
before us, — yet He will not be wanting to us, 
if we be not wanting to ourselves. Even were we 
still (as they who love us not, regardless of their 
own many causes for lamentation and wailing, 
point out with no friendly hand), like Lazarus 
swathed about with bands, bound hand and foot ; 
still believing as we do, that our Lord is only try- 
ing our faith, — treating us as He did Martha, wait- 
ing for a fuller expression of our trust in Him, we 

1 See Appendix. 



106 FAITH IN THE CHURCH UNDER SORROW. 

may set aside with confidence their taunts, our own 
misgivings. Thus then, with a full faith, let us not 
cease to make our prayers to Him day and night for 
the preservation of the ark of God in our camp, and 
by continuing in well-doing endeavour to propitiate 
His favour towards us, whom an ungenerous brother 
would cast out from His family and from the arms 
of the Mother of our love. 



SERMON VII. 

OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK, 



S. Matt. xxvi. 8, 9. 



But when His disciples saw it, they had indigna- 
tion, SAYING, To WHAT PURPOSE IS THIS WASTE ? FOR 
THIS OINTMENT MIGHT HAVE BEEN SOLD FOR MUCH, AND 
GIVEN TO THE POOR. 

We are not surprised if, after receiving from her 
Lord a favour of so wonderful a nature as the re- 
storation of her brother to life, S. Mary Magdalene 
is found, with her wonted ardour, engaging in an act 
significative of her deep gratitude for the same. At 
a feast, one of more than common observance, (for 
it was the feast-day on which the lamb was chosen 
against the passover 1 ), a religious feast at which 
Christ sat the most Honoured Guest, for we are told 
" they made Him a supper," at Bethany, in the house 
of Simon, called Simon the leper ; but no doubt the 
same Simon who two years back 2 is described by S. 
Luke as " one of the Pharisees who desired Jesus 
to eat with him," and who might subsequently have 
1 See Appendix. 2 See Appendix. 



108 OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. [SERM. 

been afflicted with leprosy and healed by our Lord, 
— at such a time, in such a place, in such a company, 
was it that S. Mary Magdalene revived the memory 
of that remarkable action in the Gospels which first 
introduces her to our meditations ; and, reviving it, 
did so imprint it on the memories of men, that 
wherever the Gospel is preached, this is " told for a 
memorial of her." But what was so remarkable a 
feature of that deed, and gave it all its stamp and 
expression, " the wiping Christ's feet with her 
hair," was, although repeated in this second and 
similar action, yet not its proper characteristic. The 
truthfulness and beauty of that former deed was in 
the signs of her humiliation in washing His feet 
with tears and wiping them with her hair : the ex- 
cellence of this in the expression of her honour and 
adoration of Christ. 

This then is eminently the anointing : and in perfect 
correspondence with this view we find that the gift 
was now infinitely more noble, as though her prin- 
cipal aim and study was now especially to perform an 
act of confession and homage unto her Lord as " The 
Anointed." For first, although the box before was of 
alabaster and consequently of no mean value, yet now 
S. Matthew tells us, that it was a " box of very pre- 
cious ointment ;" and S. Mark, while he is careful 
to assure us it was " very precious," adds the kind 
of ointment, " ointment of spikenard." Now of 
ointments made from nard there were two kinds, 
one made from the leaf, the other from the spike of 



VII.] OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. 109 

the plant, and the latter was by far the more excel- 
lent. 1 S. John gives the quantity, "a pound of 
ointment of spikenard, 5 ' while he and S. Mark state 
its actual value, " three hundred pence," i.e. since the 
hire of the labourer in the vineyard was a penny a 
day, enough to support a labouring man, perhaps 
his family, throughout a whole year. 

We may suppose that at first, before anointing 
the head of the Saviour, she, according to what S. 
John says, " wiped His feet with her hair" and 
anointed them. And this he says to complete what 
S. Matthew and S. Mark had left untold, the im- 
portant fact that she did not deem herself other than 
a penitent, although about to proceed to an act of 
worship which betokened a higher condition of ac- 
ceptableness with Christ than was heretofore her 
lot. The feet of Christ anointed, she proceeds to 
pour the precious nard upon His head, and that no- 
thing might escape in this act of sacrifice, — nothing 
be retained and subserve another use, but all be 
consumed upon Christ, she breaks the alabaster 
box itself. 

Simon, who had in his thoughts murmured on the 
occasion of her previous act of anointing, was too 
wise, by his former experience, to take any excep- 
tion at this. Besides this, what he took exception 
at, was not the act but the person who performed it. 
Costly sacrifices bestowed on those whom we greatly 

1 Bp. Andrewes' Serm. Vol. II. 38. Lib. Ang. Cath. Theol. ; 
also Corn, a Lap. and Bern. Lamy in loc. 



110 OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. [SERM. 

honour, was a notion familiar to the mind of a Pha- 
risee. This was, however, not the case with one 
who stood by during this action, which was not des- 
tined, any more than the former, to escape criticism. 
This was Judas, who because " he was a thief, and 
had the bag and bare what was put therein," l was 
induced to make complaint of this action. " To 
what purpose is this waste ? for it might have been 
sold for much, and given to the poor." And thus 
he afforded an opportunity to our Lord to under- 
take, a third time, the defence of Magdalene. As in 
this defence we may observe that our Lord avoids 
complaining of the answer of Judas as the speech of 
a thief, willing to reply, it may be, only to the objec- 
tions of the other disciples who were led away by 
the plausible manner of Judas's complaint, we per- 
haps cannot do better, in seeking out the instruction 
this part of Scripture affords, than to follow our 
Lord's method, and consider for a time Judas's 
words as though they covered no guile. 

"To what purpose is this waste?" And surely 
this is a speech that commends itself to our most 
religious sentiments as good. For what is that waste 
which God will not condemn at the Day of Judg- 
ment ? The charge of waste here implies that the 
expenditure was made to little or no purpose ; and 
hereupon Bishop Andrewes remarks, 2 " There should 
be no waste in buying, but we are to do after Christ's 

1 S. John xii. 6. 

2 Bp. Andrewes' Serm. Vol. II. p. 40. Lib. Ang. Cath. Theol. 



VII.] OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. Ill 

example and procure those things that ' we have 
need of.' Not those whereof we may have use but 
such as we have need of and cannot be without. 
Our waste must neither be in spending nor in giv- 
ing. Not in spending, for a dispensation, not a dis- 
sipation has been committed unto us Christians, a 
laying forth, not a casting away ; a wary sowing, 
not a heedless scattering. Neither waste ' in giv- 
ing ' but bestowing our alms, after the Apostle's 
rule, ' as every man hath need.' " 

Pass we now to the proposal Judas makes as to 
the best means of disposing of this precious ointment. 
And here too Bishop Andrewes may be allowed 
to speak to the generations that have come after 
him. Speaking of the value of the three hundred 
pence, he says, 1 " And this is a material point, for the 
greater the sum, the more ground for complaint ; 
1 why should there be any waste at all, but specially 
of so rich an ointment ?' Then from his estimate 
of the value, he passes on to his specious motion ' it 
might have been sold and given to the poor.' Here 
he improves upon what he had before said. Indeed, 
* why was this waste' may be the speech of a niggard, 
but this second, we may suppose, can only proceed 
from a liberal mind. ' It might have been sold and 
given to the poor.' Here he purposes, not to have 
it spared, but that it should be converted to better 
uses." Hence the Bishop concludes that the motion 
of Judas is, to all seeming, both frugal and charitable. 

1 Bp. Andrewes' Serm. Vol. II. pp, 41, 42. 



1 12 OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. [SERM. 

And in addition he finds in it the semblance of an 
unusual zeal. " All waste things," he says, " Judas 
wishes the poor had. It seems, indeed, he reckons 
that waste which the poor are not the better for ; 
that to be mispent that might be better spent and 
is not. And he makes it out to be his principal aim 
and object, that our goods may go, not to some end 
nor to some good end, but to the very best end of all 
— the relief of the poor. # # What could be better 
than that that which is otherwise lavished upon one 
may be employed to the benefit of many ; that these 
so many hundreds may be bestowed rather in nourish- 
ment than in ointment ; on necessary relief than on 
needless delight; on a continual good than on a 
transitory perfume, rather that many hungry bodies 
be filled than that one head be anointed. " Hence 
the Bishop's conclusion is, that " Judas's speech 
without Judas's application is to very good purpose 
and highly commendable." 1 

In themselves considered the words are good, but 
when applied to S. Mary Magdalene's act most 
faulty. We altogether pass by, for the present, the 
guilty intentions of Judas in saying them, and even 
thus considered pronounce them highly injurious 
to the cause of truth. For however it may seem 
otherwise at first sight, here was indeed no waste ; of 
this we have ample assurance in the declaration of 

1 Some liberties have been taken with the language of the 
Bishop, which it is hoped will be deemed justifiable by those 
who are acquainted with the peculiarities of his style. 



VII.] OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. 113 

our Lord. And with that assurance we will now 
content ourselves, reserving to a future discourse 
the answer that it was " a good work," with the 
reasons which prove that it was so. 

It was then no waste but a good work, this that 
was done upon Christ. And how does such a fact 
of holy writ come home to us and furnish matter for 
our instruction ? In what way do we pour ointment 
on the head of Christ ? In what way may some 
Judas or some disciple, it may be, led on by the 
specious complaints of a Judas, now complain of the 
ointment which we bestow upon Christ's head — 
body— feet ? 

My Brethren, Christ is ascended up on high. His 
head, in the natural sense, we can no longer anoint. 
There is but one way left us whereby we may reach 
unto His head to anoint Him — a mystical way. For 
what does the anointing of His head mean, but the 
anointing of His body the Church ? what the out- 
poured ointment, but the unreserved outpourings of 
our most abundant almsgiving and other sacrifices ? 
Is Christ then never offended at this present when 
men say "Why this waste?" Will their arrows 
aimed at His body, never hit Himself? Will He 
lightly resent indignities, nay even meddling inter- 
ferences with that sacred thing which enters into so 
near a relationship with Himself ? 

How often do we hear the cry " Why this waste ?" 
uttered against the Maries of our day, in their loving 
devotion to Christ ! The waste of time, you may 

i 



114 OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. [SERM. 

hear from the mouths of some. Many there are 
who will tell us, they deplore the sacrifice of time 
which the service of the Church consumes. "The 
age," they say, " is an age of activity : the old times 
when one-half the world might meditate for the other 
half are passed away. Moreover every one is striv- 
ing now to maintain his place, and to advance as 
others advance ; and he that will not lose his place 
must allow himself no rest where all is movement. 
Then in such an age why revive so uncongenial an 
institution as the daily prayer? why this waste? 
Why are not the religious engaged in the works of 
the religious world ? Heathenism abounds ; ignorance 
is universally complained of ; wickedness increases ; 
why are the active deserted, and while they are un- 
flinchingly endeavouring to stem the torrent of evil 
with which they are beset, why do you undeviatingly 
pursue your hours of prayer as though you could 
never look abroad ? Why this waste, of your means 
of usefulness, of your influence ? for you might be 
oftentimes better employed by supporting, and 
urging on, in public efforts, the cause of the Gospel/' 
Again, there are others who have no sympathy 
with what they think is " waste" in almsgiving. That 
frank and generous feeling which would surrender 
all to win all, spending all that earth has given to win 
Christ, the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, 
they do not appreciate, cannot understand. " Are 
there not ways," they say, " short of this, and suit- 
able to the spirit of these latter and more enlight- 



VII.] OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. 115 

ened times of the Church, by which constant supplies 
may be obtained for the Church's necessity, and yet 
the purses of individuals be not so unnaturally 
drained?" They ask, in short, a way of charity by 
which all may exercise the virtue, none suffer the 
pains of its acquisition. Minds of the character 
such a way of thinking indicates, while they will 
admire the great beauty of works of ecclesiastical 
art, yet cannot bring themselves to have any sym- 
pathy with the pious and ennobling feelings to which 
such works owe their existence, and from which as 
from a parent source they can only derive their origin. 

"Wherefore," they say, " such costly buildings, 
wherefore cathedrals and collegiate churches with 
their vast unoccupied spaces, their lofty vaulted roofs, 
their forest-like naves ? Wherefore such minute 
devices in their adornment ; yea, even in parts of 
them on which the human eye seldom or never 
settles ? Wherefore the rich enchased chalice, the 
costly flagon, the splendour of dressings for the 
altar, with all their curious and unrecompensing 
workings ? " 

To all these objections, to all these murmuring 
cries of waste, we have but one answer now. But 
that is Christ's. " Let her alone, she hath wrought 
a good work upon Me." He foresaw the sort of 
reception with which sacrifices of this kind, made in 
His Church's behalf, would meet, and thus (if we 
have not mistaken the application and force of our 
text) silences it for ever. 

i 2 



116 OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. [SERM. 

But this spirit of Judas has in this our day mani- 
fested itself under a special form, with which we 
should be careful not to allow ourselves to be de- 
ceived. " Why this waste ?" it says. "Why waste your 
inventive powers in vain attempts to prove your 
claims to Catholicity of character ?" This tone of 
discouragement with which they look upon our good 
work reminds us of the jealousy of the enemies of 
the Lord at the sacred work of Nehemiah in re- 
building the walls of Jerusalem. " When Sanballat 
the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant the Ammo- 
nite, and Geshem the Arabian heard it, they laughed 
us to scorn and despised us." 1 Accordingly they 
proceeded to throw every discouragement in the way 
of God's servant. And thus, certain, in the present 
day, who envy the great progress we make in the 
restoration of the ancient ecclesiastical buildings of 
this our Church, and our successful efforts in the 
large multiplication of similar fabrics to God's glory, 
havebeen forward to insinuate that the efforts of mem- 
bers of the Church of England to restore ecclesiastical 
art in this country are hopeless, as being the offspring 
of minds deficient in that Catholic temper which 
produced the great works that adorn this land. 
Well knowing how easy it is to damp the ardour of 
the youthful and inexperienced by an affected supe- 
riority, they oppose and decry a taste and skill 
which they would yet most willingly see transferred 
to their own community. Indeed no arts are spared 
- * Neh. ii. 19. 



VII.] OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. 117 

by the sons of Rome to repress the good work pro- 
gressing of late years in the Church of England. 
Our architecture, they tell us, is not our own, — our 
divinity is not our own, — our devotional writings are 
borrowed from themselves. What then ? Shall we 
be told that England is no longer England, because 
every language and every institution, and every go- 
vernment and every soil is made to contribute of their 
fertility to make England what it is ? Let them under- 
stand that we claim the right, as children of the 
Catholic Church, to mould to our use, no less than 
themselves, any gift, grace or excellent thing with 
which Christ Jesus has been pleased to endow His 
holy body, the common inheritance of all the saints. 

Thus they sow insinuations which may either 
seduce our members from the fold, or yet at least 
may depress the efforts of those who remain with- 
in it : and the grief is that some have been found 
so suicidal as to give ear to them. The insinuation 
that our Church is not endued with a Catholic spirit, 
in her methods for carrying out her institutions or 
principles, is indeed, in these times, to strike at a part 
in her defences which unhappily her own sons have 
for long left most weak and unguarded ; and with 
some, as recent experience has too lamentably shown, 
whom wounded feelings more than their judgment 
or an enlightened conscience would seem to guide, 
it has cut like a knife, or the piercings of a sword. 
But what, my brethren, is the true state of the case ? 
It is well known, to almost all whom I now address, 



1 18 OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. [SERM. 

that if a taste for ecclesiastical art has not manifested 
itself till very recently in our Church, neither has it 
manifested itself among Romanists. In this respect 
ecclesiastical art, even on the continent, 1 has only 
kept pace with its progress in this country. If we 
have been backward, they have been equally so. To 
say that Rome only can duly foster such arts is to 
say that which time only can prove ; but which the 
experience of every day seems to deny. 2 

Let then the sons of our Church be on their guard 
against entertaining this spirit of despondency ; and 
whilst fighting, as now we are reduced to fight, the 
Lord's battles, " with one hand in the work and 
with the other holding a weapon," let them take the 
comfort, contained in our Saviour's answer to all 
our enemies in this kind for ever, " Let her alone, 
she hath wrought a good work upon Me." 

But our Lord suffered Judas to tell Him that he 
would have expended the three hundred pence on 
the poor ; and because our Lord answered not his 
intent but only his argument, for the benefit of those 
who should hereafter (stumbling in sincerity) urge 
a like ground of opposition to acts of mystical 
anointing, we also will now so apply his objection 
and the answer it received. Against waste of time 
in public prayer and praise, of alms in works of cost 
and curious enrichment to God's House, some urge 
the claims of the poor, the sick, the dying. " Better 
far to tend these than to consume ever so much 
1 See Appendix. 2 See Appendix. 



VII.] OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. 119 

time or give your alms to those.' ' But our Lord 
said, " She hath wrought a good work, let her alone. 
The poor ye have always with you, and when ye will 
ye may do them good, but Me ye have not always." 
" Seldom are you called upon to build churches," He 
answers to those who cannot understand the prin- 
ciple of anointing His head at this day : " seldom to 
acts of costly enrichment of My sepulchre. A 
church and its beauty may remain to you and your 
generations for centuries. While then the poor are 
at your doors, never perish out of the land, and 
when ye will, at any hour you may succour them ; 
Me, My church, ye are not always called on to aid. 
Its buildings, its endowments, for the most part are 
gifts of your pious forefathers, not yours. Seldom 
do I call upon you to anoint in this costly way My 
head, but every day I look to you to anoint My 
feet, My poor. Whenever, therefore, I offer you an 
opportunity make the most of it ; for again I say, 
' Me ye have not always with you.' " J 

And now but one point remains to be considered 
which we have hitherto deferred doing. It is one 
that conveys its lesson. The disciples we see, — such 
of them as joined with Judas, w T ere not of themselves 
forward to complain of Mary's offering to Christ. 
They were stirred up to this act by Judas, and Judas 
was, w 7 e are told by S. John, " a thief." Ought not 
this fact to have its influence with us, in forming 
our judgment concerning all questions in which the 
1 See Appendix. 



120 OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. [SERM. 

Church is concerned ? And when we hear complaint 
made against her, whether in the persons of the 
ecclesiastics, who at any period of her history have 
been her defenders, or of the holy persons who have 
been her benefactors ; shall not we the disciples be 
careful to learn what kind of persons these are that 
make the accusation ? Shall we be willing to follow 
any teaching on this subject ? Shall we expect to 
learn from the world and the press, instituted for the 
most part, for the purpose only of receiving and com- 
municating an impress from the world, the right con- 
struction to put upon the course and conduct of that 
sacred body which is not — cannot be, of the world ? 
Or shall the civil historian be our oracle on matters 
ecclesiastical ? Had the providences of Almighty God 
handed down to us the history of His ancient church 
and people the Jews, by the civil historian, how little 
would he have been able to have rendered a satis- 
factory account of the events that happen therein ! 
How different would have been our accounts of the 
actions and public principles of the kings and pro- 
phets whom God raised up, or of the nations 
whom He scourged ! Does, for instance, the his- 
tory of the Fall of Man justify itself to the mere 
reasoning of man ? Does the Deluge commend itself 
to the carnal mind as the act of a Just and Merci- 
ful God ? Is the history of Moses one that may be 
reduced to the philosophy of the modern historian ? 
What would be — what is said by the unenlight- 
ened understanding of man to the destruction of so 



VII.] OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. 121 

many cities and nations in Canaan ? What would 
be said of Joshua's act with regard to the guiltless 
family of the guilty Achan ? Perhaps the number- 
ing of his people would be, in such hands, accounted 
the wisest and most politic act in David's life. 
Weigh such characters as Elijah, Elisha, and the 
prophets generally, by the world's standard; and what 
would be the result but either condemnation or re- 
servation of the truth concerning them ? If then, so 
little can the civil historian comprehend the lesser 
light the Jewish, how shall he embrace the greater, 
the glories of the Christian Church ? If her actions 
must indeed be judged by the world's standard, yet 
at least let not her own sons be deceived by the 
pretences of Judas. How many times might the 
acts of some distinguished overseer of Christ's 
flock, condemned without hesitation in secular his- 
tory, be found when judged by the light of Christian 
truth and holiness, to be full of matter for the 
Church's rejoicings? When then we hear com- 
plaint, let us not give too ready ear like those disci- 
ples of old, but first ask " May not this be some 
Judas who says this ; some one who at least 
never heartily loved that Church of whose children 
he speaks so freely ?" And then surely from our 
libraries (at least as works of authority on points of 
religion) will be discarded the deist Hume, the 
scoffer Gibbon, and in their place we shall ask for 
writers whose whole lives testify to their love of the 
Church of Christ; not those who have lived ever 



122 OINTMENT NO WASTE BUT A GOOD WORK. 

out of the Church ; not those who, within the 
Church, hold doctrines learnt from her enemies, but 
men who are commonly recognized as writers of a 
Church temper. Who is likely, according to analogy, 
to give the most probable account of an ecclesiastical 
transaction, he who can enter with affection into the 
minuter indications of her spirit, or he whose mind 
is the more estranged, in proportion as he is sepa- 
rated from her, by those many lines which distin- 
guish an enemy within the camp from the open 
blasphemer against God and all religion ? 

Finally, my brethren, let us faithfully keep on 
our course of well-doing. Let not the example of 
weak brethren amongst us deter us in our acts of 
devotion to Christ's body. The two rocks on 
which they are wont to split, led by their evil- 
minded pilot Judas, have been pointed out to you ; 
the jealousy and envy of the one party, the disaf- 
fection and disloyalty of another. Let us beware of 
both, and avoid being numbered with the disciples 
who unwarily committed themselves to the guidance 
of the traitor. Above all, let us be careful how 
from erring companions we become fast friends 
with Judas, and so be involved in one common ruin 
with the son of Perdition. 



SERMON VIII. 

OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACBIFICE. 



S. Matt. xxvi. 10. 



When Jesus understood it, He said unto them, Why 
trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a 

GOOD WORK UPON Me. 

In the last discourse we considered at some length 
the complaint of Judas. We dwelt upon it in its 
obvious application to some but too well remem- 
bered features of the gospel history. The too 
favourable reception which it has met with in the 
world from the pretended friends, but designing 
enemies, of the Church of Christ, cannot escape 
the student of ecclesiastical annals, who finds that in 
all the several stages of Christianity there have ever 
been those who murmur in the spirit of Judas. We 
then contented ourselves with showing that Christ 
had manifestly set Himself against this evil spirit ; 
and had defended, in the strongest manner, that holy 
and noble temper of mind which it gainsaid and de- 
preciated. We reserved, however, to the present 
occasion, the statement of the grounds of Christ's 



124 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. [SERM. 

defence of Mary, and the exhibition of the intimate 
connection that exists between certain acts of the 
Church which are popularly misconstrued, as daily 
prayer, costly alms, and other kindred devotions of the 
faithful, and this act of anointing by S. Mary Mag- 
dalene. We shall now attempt to show that both are 
a common result of but one and the same principle. 

And in endeavouring to exhibit the grounds of 
Mary's act, let us observe its characteristic feature. 
It claims for itself no ostensible usefulness. It be- 
gins and ends in itself. The precious ointment is 
poured out — the box containing it broken — nothing 
saved. In short, there is so much appearance of 
" waste" in it, that men of undoubted religion and 
piety, even the disciples of Christ, complain of it. 

But notwithstanding, we see that Christ fully 
justifies- — approves of it — and commends it as a 
good work, no less to be imitated than commemo- 
rated by all posterity. For as Bishop Andrewes 
says, " Go and do thou likewise" is plainly enough 
inscribed on this box. 1 

Now this work may be good undoubtedly in many 
other respects ; but to be rightly a guide to us, my 
brethren, we must show it to be good in principle ; 
and this construction will be found warranted by the 
words of the sacred narrative. The act is affirmed 
to be "good," by way of contrast to the charge of 
waste. Why this waste ? saith Judas and the dis- 
ciples. He pretended that it was bad in principle. 
1 Bp. Andrewes. Lib. Ang. Cath. Theol. Vol. II. p. 56. 



VIII.] OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 125 

To waste anything, especially such a sum, was a 
shameful, an immoral act, — such an one, indeed, as 
affected a grave principle. Had not a principle been 
involved in the matter, we may be sure the disciples 
would not have allowed themselves to be deceived 
by any plea set up for the poor in preference to our 
Blessed Lord. Where His honour was concerned 
they would not have consented to set any, even the 
poor, in competition with Him. Judas had seduced 
them by alleging a principle, and a show of reason 
prevailed with them. For their warning and ours 
Christ made answer, and unloosed the knot which 
had been so skilfully weaved to entrap their sim- 
plicity. " This is no waste, but a good work " was 
His reply, and thus He distinctly affirmed that the 
ground on which works of this kind are performed, 
that of doing Him honour exclusive of all consider- 
ations of utility, is a good and high and holy prin- 
ciple. And this we are to look upon as the most 
direct reply their objection received. That the poor 
would not be injured by His anointing, which is im- 
plied in the manner of His speaking of them, and 
that it was done against His burial, are answers de- 
signed (not to meet the chief ground of complaint, 
but rather) the one to ward off a subordinate objec- 
tion, the other to establish by anticipation that most 
remarkable feature in Mary's faith, her presenti- 
ment, however vague, that Christ must die. 

As thus ; in receiving His gift and act of homage 
from Mary, our Blessed Saviour excludes no one 



126 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. [sERM. 

else that might seem to have a right to it. It was a 
good work, and the poor in no way injured. And 
here He declares that He admits of no opposition to 
be made betwixt Himself and His poor : He and 
they are one- — what is given to them is bestowed 
upon Him. 1 What upon Him, descends to them as 
the " ointment that ran down unto Aaron's beard, 
and went down to the skirts of his clothing." Only 
He gives this caution, that when men are bent upon 
supporting the cause of the poor, they must first 
have a care that they honour Christ the Lord of 
the poor. Let the head and the heart be duly cared 
for, the feet and all else will of themselves be natu- 
rally tended. 

Besides this He seems to say, " Let all that make 
complaint against My ointment on pretext of the 
poor, first consider how many superfluous expenses 
they are wont to lavish upon themselves. Who are 
they who do not at times exceed that proportion in 
diet and clothing which positive necessity requires ?" 
Further, He might have alleged, what no doubt was 
a prominent thought in Mary's mind — that He was 
a Prophet, Priest and King, and therefore most 
worthy of being anointed ; but He contents Himself 
in His great humility, with saying words to this 
effect, "You are wont to consume large sums in 
anointing against a burial. Well, she hath done 
this for My burial." These answers were well cal- 
culated to silence objections ; but for our comfort 

1 See Appendix. 



VIII.] OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 127 

He has taught us something better about Mary's 
act — It was good in principle. 

Thus we come to this conclusion — that in religion 
and in morals certain acts have a place which may 
be said to have at first sight a very unfeasible look, 
an almost unnatural aspect : acts which make 
themselves little understood, if examined by the 
dictates of first suggestions and the common sense 
of mankind ; and so apparently afford ground for 
complaint and reprehension : but again acts, which 
when they come to be tested, are found to be based 
on principles of perfect though recondite reason ; 
and which by our Saviour's esteeming Mary's oint- 
ment above even the claims of the poor are seen to 
be preferable to many good works which more obvi- 
ously recommend themselves to our minds. 

The words of our Divine Lord bring us to this 
conclusion, that acts such as these are good in prin- 
ciple ; and we naturally desire to gain a more par- 
ticular insight into the order of things by which 
their goodness is made manifest. Let us, then, take 
as examples some of those many things against which 
this cry of waste might be brought ; and endeavour 
to ascertain what is that common principle pervading 
them all which so commends them in the sight of 
God. For instance, it is a work of no great diffi- 
culty to separate in our minds dignity of office or 
power from those symbols by which we are wont to 
represent it. And we know that power and great- 
ness may exist in cases where outward signs do in 



128 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. [SERM. 

a very small degree or even not at all represent 
it. And hence to the mind which is only just 
awakened to reflection, or which seldom gets beyond 
the surface of things, these might seem to be in all 
cases as profitably dispensed with as retained. It may 
be asked, " Is the jewelled coronet necessary where 
the noble has all the weight and influence in society 
which his rank has a right to command ? It will 
not, on the one hand, give additional lustre to the 
virtues and talents which distinguish him ; on the 
other, it will not oblige his fellow-men any the more 
to shut their eyes upon his defects, his infirmities, 
or his sins. Why retain a bauble of whose exis- 
tence and use you can give no tangible account ? — 
w T hy this waste ?" 

Again. Do the costly trappings of state add to 
the real power which they represent ? We take all 
possible pains to embody the notion of regal power. 
To him who occupies a throne belongs the Crown, 
the Sceptre, the Court, and all which constitutes 
that atmosphere of dignity that surrounds as it were 
the sacred person of the monarch. And yet it is 
very clear that the power itself is a thing quite dis- 
tinct from its embodiment. And we can readily 
conceive persons reasoning in this manner. " Might 
not the power be maintained as heretofore, but these 
external signs (costly and unwieldy as they are) be 
well spared." And is there not in this much that is 
akin to Judas's charge of waste ? A ready objection 
— the reasoning specious ; and the answer not so 






VIII.] OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 129 

easily produced or intelligible, how much soever it 
may deserve consideration, when produced. And 
what is the answer? First, that reduce the trap- 
pings and circumstances which symbolize power and 
rank in ever so great a degree, still some vestiges of 
the principle (as a principle) shall remain ; secondly, 
that lay aside solemn ceremonial and all state and 
emblems of greatness, and you reject a deep prin- 
ciple capable of influencing man in the highest 
degree — the principle, namely, that man is influenced 
by signs and notes of truths — by external and visible 
shows of things. By these it is he gains some faint 
glimpses of their internal spirit and essence, even 
when least able to apprehend what that internal 
spirit and essence is. And if this principle be wanting 
to sustain and preserve a due sense of the power, 
dignity, and authority, God has delegated to man in 
temporal matters, how much more is it wanting in 
things which concern another life. 

The Almighty, Himself All-seeing, All-know- 
ing, is hidden from the eyes of the sons of men. 
Unlike kings and magistrates He seldom causes His 
power on any infraction of His laws to be immedi- 
ately felt. This arises from His temper of long- 
suffering. But this forbearance naturally makes it 
all the more difficult for us to realize the fact of His 
existence. His nature, His attributes, His will are 
things which of themselves come not home to our 
minds. They are points remote from our present 
grovelling thoughts. The Angels see Him as He is, 

K 



130 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. [SERM. 

as one day we hope to do. At present we have no 
such constant motive as they to goodness ; no en- 
during sense of an Eye taking cognizance of all we 
think, say, do. He does indeed make Himself dis- 
cernible to us, but it is through matter, and an ex- 
tensive scheme of instrumentality. And the very 
matter, through which He makes Himself visible, is 
yet the very means by which our vision of Him is 
in part obscured. The flesh, it is true, displays the 
powers of His workings. Take but the human frame 
for an instance of this. But yet it is the flesh that 
veils Him in His workings by intrusion of itself. 
How then shall the Far-off be brought near ? How 
shall we realize and keep alive in our minds a con- 
stant sense of the presence of a God as unseen, so in 
that degree unfelt ? How ? but by erecting on all 
sides of us tokens and marks and signs expressive 
of that solemn truth, " God is." And is there no- 
thing around us in the range of nature which may 
serve to assure us that the mind of God approves 
of this way of impressing on our souls images of His 
greatness ? 

Wherefore then those mighty shadows of an invi- 
sible power — the inaccessible rocky height, and the 
mountain capped with its eternal snows ? Where- 
fore ocean's boundless expanse, the lightning and 
the storm ? Wherefore all those other traces of His 
mighty hand, with which the realms of nature 
abound ? Wherefore, if not that (among other rea- 
sons) they might be so many stern monitors to man 



VIII.] OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 131 

of the dread Majesty of Him Whose servant and 
creature he is ? 

And now let us observe a similar principle at work 
in that pervading notion in the several religions of 
the great family of man — sacrifice. What mean 
the sacrifices of the Jewish law ? what that univer- 
sal tradition, traceable to the elder dispensation, 
which has led men to offer up to the Majesty of 
Deity the holocaust and the hecatomb, and has 
caused the blood of unoffending victims to flow with 
such profuse abundance ? 1 What but that all these, 
like the act of S. Mary Magdalene, have the seal " a 
good work " stamped upon them? Good, i. e., in 
principle, however at first sight they may seem 
chargeable with the complaint of " waste." For let 
us not think lightly of sacrifices, whether Pagan or 
Jewish. We shall find them vindicated by Almighty 
God, as containing a principle of the highest and 
most extensive application in the things of religion. 
It is true in Ho sea 2 we have " For I desired mercy 
and not sacrifice." And in the Book of Proverbs 3 
we are taught that "to do justice is more accept- 
able than sacrifice, " and in the Psalms 4 " Sacrifice 
and meat-offering Thou wouldest not ; " again 
"Thou delightest not in burnt -offerings," 5 and 
"The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit." 

1 See 1 Kings viii. 63. Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace- 
offerings, which he offered unto the Lord, 22,000 oxen and 
120,000 sheep. 

3 vi. 6. 3 xxi. 3. 4 xl. 6. 5 li. 16. 

k2 



132 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. [SERM. 

Yet we have immediately after " Build Thou 
the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt Thou be 
pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the 
burnt-offerings and oblations, then shall they offer 
young bullocks upon Thine altar." God, then, you 
see does delight in some sacrifices. But what sacri- 
fices ? Now David is here prophesying of the times 
of the Gospel, of the heavenly Jerusalem, the 
Church, the walls of which were to be built in 
Christ's sacrifice for sin on the Cross, " the Sacri- 
fice of Righteousness " as he calls it, But he con- 
tinues and mentions other sacrifices, and what are 
the " burnt-offerings and oblations, the young bul- 
locks upon God's altar," but those sacrifices (com- 
memorative of the one great oblation) which we of 
the Christian Church celebrate — those better sacri- 
fices with which S. Paul says, " the heavenly things 
were to be purified" ? Where then it is said He de- 
lights not in burnt -offerings, He complains not of 
sacrifices as in principle wrong, but only of the 
Jewish burnt-offering and all other offerings, when 
contrasted with the sacrifices of the Christian law, of 
which mercy and truth and the troubled spirit and 
the contrite heart are the great leading character- 
istics. In short, all sacrifices for sin are based on a 
solemn and grave principle. They speak to the 
Pagan, to the Jewish, to the Christian world, one 
universal truth, that man is not to depend on his 
own righteousness for salvation, but on the righteous- 
ness of some all-spotless victim. Whatsoever else 



VIII.] OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 133 



then they do, this at least they perform for man, 
they constantly remind him in a symbolic action of 
the nature of God and of His requirements at the 
hands of man. 

And who cannot see that in devoting much time 
to the prayers of the Church, as well daily as weekly, 
and to the frequent solemnization of Holy Commu- 
nion, we are following a principle which springs 
from a like source with that which produced Mary's 
act ? To what feeling too are we to attribute those 
common attendants of almost all religions, a nume- 
rous ministry and devout worshippers, the solemn 
ritual and the sense of mystery preserved, the pro- 
priety and beauty of vestments, and the splendour 
and cost of vessels, the exquisite loveliness of deco- 
ration, and the magnificence and solemn vastness of 
edifices ? Has not a common instinct, as it were, 
directed men in the way how best to preserve the 
sense of God in the world ? Are they not all the 
external expression by which is shown man's deep 
devotion of heart to that Being Whom he adores ? 

Take the daily prayer for instance. Hardly per- 
haps can we bring our minds to think it, but prayer, 
at any time, has such marks about it resembling 
Mary's act that even it, with some, does not escape 
the complaint of " waste." We are unhappily but too 
familiar with a way of speaking such as this. " The 
Almighty is omniscient, and knows what we ask 
before we ask, what need then of prayer ? " This 
they say against prayer in the abstract, but they add 



134 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. [SERM. 

a further complaint of it when put up in the solemn 
services of the sanctuary. " Why not pray as well 
at home ? God is everywhere ! " And has no 
good spirit ever whispered to them, that (letting 
alone its other blessed uses) its power to realize to 
our minds an ever-renewing sense of the Divine In- 
terposition in the affairs of man is in itself no small 
recommendation of its excellence and value ? And 
must not such a notion as this, the notion of God's 
constant presence amongst us, be the more fully con- 
veyed in proportion as prayer is offered under cir- 
cumstances of public solemnity and ritual propriety ? 
The God Whom we worship in private as a Father, 
we approach in public as a King. 

But there are those to whom private prayer and 
public prayer are no obstacles, and yet cannot un- 
derstand the principle which obliges to daily prayer. 
"At least," they say, " this is waste." And al- 
though it is but said to them, as it was said to Judas, 
" Do but let them alone that love this work, you 
are not obliged to share in it," they, like Judas, 
must needs murmur, will not let alone, but still con- 
tinue to cry, "A waste." 

But now, let us question in our turn : — should the 
solemn public recognition by man of the Great 
Jehovah take place seldom or often, at intervals of 
a month, or a week, or a day ? What more reason- 
able than that in the courts of the King of kings 
the incense of praise and thanksgiving, the glad and 
reverent homage of His subjects (at least, as it were, 



VIII.] OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 135 

of a part delegated from the rest) should be offered 
daily unto Him, agreeably with that of the Psalmist, 
"Prayer shall be made ever unto Him, and daily 
shall He be praised " ? 

And does not this way of viewing the subject ap- 
ply with equal force to Holy Communion, the high- 
est act of homage to the Blessed Trinity ? From 
what source can we gain such distinct impressions 
of the separate works of Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit, in the economy of our redemption than in 
that most Holy Ordinance ? It is sometimes alleged, 
as an objection to its frequent celebration, that being 
a mere commemorative act, if oft repeated, it must 
lose its impressiveness. And there is surely some 
force in this objection, if we are willing to close our 
eyes to the fact of the unspeakable gift of God con- 
ferred in it on man. But even thus accepted, surely 
our Saviour might say, " Let her alone, her the 
Church ; it is no waste but a good work." For let 
it be well considered, whether it is unreasonable that 
even once a week 1 we should, I do not say all of us, 
but as it were a part of the congregation presenting 
themselves for the whole, come into the presence- 
chamber and before the mercy-seat of God on earth, 
and there renew solemnly our oaths of allegiance to 
Him Who purchased us with His blood, there com- 
memorate that awful and stupendous act of love and 
justice, and put up our most earnest petitions in 

1 The Holy Communion is celebrated weekly in the Church 
in which this Sermon was preached. 



136 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. [SERM. 

behalf of ourselves and the whole Church in the faith 
of its efficacy. It was thought a fearful thing among 
the Jews when the prophets said that the " daily 
sacrifice should be taken away." Shall it be called 
a waste if we offer our eucharistic sacrifice weekly ? 

Now if it be objected, that all this prayer in the 
Church must needs withdraw the attention of the 
Clergy from a due care of the poor, let answer be 
made : that the practical working of all this honour 
done to Christ rather tends to a quite contrary re- 
sult. Surely no opposition must be made between 
Christ's honour and His poor when the results are 
such as these. By attention to the honour of Christ, 
the people are taught to sympathize with poverty in 
its most sanctified aspect, and freely at the altar of 
the Brother of the poor do they bestow alms on the 
poor. And of the Clergy, this may be said, — that 
they, who are ever in their place ready to glorify 
Him, must be ever at hand ready to serve His poor. 
And so it was, that at the beautiful gate of the temple, 
an Apostle found one of Ch rist's poor whom he could 
serve. Frequent services, it cannot be denied, have 
at least this practical advantage attending them, as 
regards the spiritual concerns of a parish. The 
Ministers of the Church cannot wander far from the 
scene of their labours ; and they who twice a day 
may be found in their Churches are twice a day 
at well-known times and in a fitting place most 
accessible to all their parishioners. 

But now we come to other objections. Wherefore 



VIII.] OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 137 

the rich oak carvings, the curiously wrought stone- 
work, the painted window ? wherefore above all many 
a choice piece of work which perhaps is never visible 
to the eye of man ? Wherefore the mysterious recesses 
caused by transept and column ? Wherefore the lofty 
tower, the sky-piercing spire ? Why should thought 
and charge be consumed on a vestment ? Why should 
one colour be preferred to another ? Why should 
it be thought a worthy service for many Priests to 
minister at some altars, as in Cathedrals and some 
Churches ; while in others of God's Houses, but one 
or at most two Ministers are rightly deemed suffi- 
cient to perform the allotted office ? 

Thus oftentimes is ointment grudged, and a better 
way of disposing of Christ's property devised ; but 
notwithstanding a secret instinct, supplying the 
place of more solid argument, continues to persuade 
the Christian mind that the bestowal on Christ of 
sacrifices, after the proportion of S. Mary Magda- 
lene, whole burnt offerings, whole as seeking no re- 
turn, as offered to Him for His own sake alone, are 
in the highest degree acceptable to Him, "a sweet- 
smelling sacrifice" indeed. 

If then, my brethren, we have faithfully illustrated 
this part of Scripture for your soul's good, let us 
ask further, What have we of this Church of Eng- 
land been doing as concerning it ? Have we sided 
with Judas or with S, Mary Magdalene ? Our 
Church, in her expressed will, is, blessed be God ! 
though with a chastened reserve peculiar to the 
genius of the people with whom she has to deal, in 



138 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. [SERM. 

every way faithful to this principle of which Christ 
is the advocate. Out of many proofs let this one 
suffice. Her provision for daily prayer, attended 
especially as this is with an appointment, which in a 
striking manner, exhibits her mind. All Priests and 
Deacons, whether having cure of souls or not, are to 
say the morning and evening prayer daily in private 
or openly. 1 Even in private, observe. Though their 
direct influence, as regards the edification of men's 
souls, should have ceased ; yet have they a relation 
towards God. They are to do honour to Him as 
Priests by a private performance of the daily ser- 
vice. The express utility of this, it may be, is not 
readily discernible ; and to follow out the practice is 
surely with Mary Magdalene to offer ointment. But 
if the Church of England, in the declaration of her 
mind and will, have been faithful to this principle, 
can it be equally said so as regards the manner in 
which her members have ordinarily sought to give 
expression to it ? Alas, while the body is sound, 
the members are sadly disfigured with putrefying 
sores. The principle remains, but it has been scarcely 
allowed to energize into active life. Does not the 
lack existing around us of daily services, our seldom 
Communions, our other rites so irreverently per- 
formed, reproach us even now, after our so many 
years' struggles for a reformation in this kind ? 

And what is that reluctance which, as a people, 
we have manifested to yield to the voice of the 
Church, and have these services solemnized duly and 
1 Preface to Book of Common Prayer. 



VIII.] OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 139 

in the fear of the Lord, but a siding with Judas, the 
cry of " waste" renewed? Surely we have still to 
learn, would we be truly successful in our labours of 
love, less to consider the mere utility of things than 
the glory of Christ. As a Church, alas ! we fear that 
too little has been done to forward the due develope- 
ment of this principle ; but as it is one which was 
confessedly both entertained and adhered to, in the 
earlier periods of our Church history, we have to 
consider this point only in its connection with the 
events of later days. 

It is a subject which must needs give rise to 
many sorrowful thoughts and memories ; and yet 
perhaps our ecclesiastical annals could hardly have 
presented any other aspect than that which they do 
present. What we read therein is what every 
thoughtful mind would have anticipated. It is but 
a chain of causes producing their necessary results. 
Consider the evils with which our Church has ever 
had to struggle, and the line of principles which it 
has had to maintain ; and it will be admitted how 
little could developement have tfeen afforded to 
principles of the kind we advocate. With the good 
seed sown at the Reformation the enemy sowed his 
abundant tares ; and they brought forth those sor- 
rows which, however much they may endear our 
Church to our hearts, as being the fruit of a foreign 
graft in which she rejoices not, but to which her 
nature is entirely alien, yet avowedly in part 
deform it. Rich and noble were the gifts which 
had been made to Christ in this Church, on the 



140 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. [SERM. 

principle commended in this discourse. But there 
came a cry of " waste," and unhappily there were but 
too good grounds for the many-tongued cries of all 
earnest-minded men who had feeling for the spiritual 
wrongs and grievances of the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries. There came a cry of "waste" : for institu- 
tions, after the lapse of years, almost of necessity 
contract corruption. Well, the monarch was needy ; 
his courtiers craving ; and, therefore, whatsoever 
should have been purified, or at least retained 
to the services of religion in some other way, that 
was called " waste " and sacrificed to their lust. With 
the sacrilegious eye of Judas did they regard the 
contents of Christ's bag. And how often might they 
have first abused the steward's charge committed to 
them, and then railed at the abuse of which they 
themselves had been the authors. 1 The example 
was not lost. The humour for sacrilege long survived 
this first outburst. 2 From such beginnings was it 
reasonable to expect other consequences than the 
frightful doings of the times of the usurper Crom- 
well, of whose days it may be said that almost every 
principle that the religious people of Christendom 
had for sixteen centuries respected, was then despised 
and set at nought 3 ? Nor was it likely thatthe sub- 
sequent periods should survive the blow thus given 
to piety. It would have been scarcely reasonable 
to expect any other than that melancholy train of 
circumstances which has, in some respects, marked 
the subsequent history of our Church. 

1 See Appendix. 2 See Appendix. 3 See Appendix. 



VIII.] OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 141 

Judas was but too successful in his arguments with 
the disciples of Christ in this Church of England. 
Those vicious reasonings, then set afloat by fanatical 
and encouraged by designing men, have since re- 
tained (in some particulars) their hold upon many 
even of the best of men. The contention of prin- 
ciples, in short, left an ugly scar behind. The victor 
came not off unscathed. As a great principle and 
upon the whole, true Christian charity has not 
flourished since its proper growth was stunted and 
discouraged in the memory of the past. Hence a 
low expediency has prevailed ; and in lieu of our 
best, offered as a sacrifice to God's glory, we have 
been moved primarily to respect man's edification 
and man's convenience. A spirit, accommodating 
itself to earthly things, has been allowed to rule 
almost all modern ecclesiastical arrangement ; while 
those solemnities of worship, which should spring 
from notions of the infinite honour due to Almighty 
God, have been disregarded and abandoned. 

What then remains but that we be on our guard 
against Judas, and eschew his evil maxims ? — and 
having, in such an alarming way, as we have seen, like 
the misguided disciples followed the son of perdition 
in his path of error, let us now deliberately retrace our 
steps. At the expiration of three centuries, we find 
ourselves a Church of recognized principles ; — prin- 
ciples which were once struggling for existence, and 
were often misunderstood almost as much by friend 
as by foe, but which the test of time has given a weight 



142 OINTMENT AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE. 

and force to that must make them respectable in all se- 
rious minds, yea, even a subject of earnest thought 
with the whole Catholic Church. If in contending for 
the Church of England against a mere negative pro- 
testantism, we once were so strongly obliged to de- 
clare against the corruptions and error of an ancient 
Church that we could devote little thought to that por- 
tion of truth which is affirmative and catholic, — it is 
happily now no longer the case. A Church, whose 
reformation has weathered the storms of three hun- 
dred years can afford to take her stand and pro- 
mulge her principles, free for the most part from all 
negative statements and in the simple language of 
positive truth ; and the cry of Romanism, as charged 
upon our holy and high-minded exertions for 
Christ's sake must be repelled simply and boldly 
with the answer of our Blessed Lord — " It is a good 
work." " Let them alone " who with the saints of 
God " show the glory of His kingdom and talk of 
His power, that His power, glory, and mightiness 
of His kingdom might be known unto men" who 
say " we will keep Thy ceremonies." 

And in this confidence let us pray, " O forsake us 
not utterly ; comfort us again now after the time 
that Thou hast plagued us, and for the years wherein 
we have suffered adversity. Show Thy servants 
Thy work, and their children Thy glory. And the 
glorious Majesty of the Lord our God be upon us ; 
prosper Thou the work of our hands upon us ; O 
prosper Thou our handy-work." 



SERMON IX. 

THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



S. John xix. 25. 



NOW THERE STOOD BY THE CROSS OF JESUS HlS MOTHER, 

and His Mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, 
and Mary Magdalene. 

How gentle are the means by which Christ draws 
us up to Him, and to the mysteries of His Cross of 
suffering ! How willing is He that all His instruc- 
tions should sink as deeply, so gradually into our 
hearts. He watches with an unwearying interest 
our seed-time, — our spring-time, — our harvest-time. 
He waits with a long enduring patience for the glad 
fruits of our training ; and He expects not in us the 
virtues of the full-grown Christian until time and 
opportunity have been allowed us to struggle against, 
and successfully to overcome the many trials He has 
fitted us severally to bear. Thus by ways of love 
He shows us the path to His Cross. 

Take His apostles as an instance. The gospel 
that He preached to them He thus shortly sums up. 
" If any man will come after Me, let him take up 



144 THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. [SERM. 

his cross and follow Me." Well, they received His 
words, and so embraced the whole gospel all at once ; 
and yet this must not be understood as though it 
opened upon their understandings all at once. His 
great and watchful love prevented this; lest He 
should throw in their way, when as yet they were 
unprepared for it, "a stone of stumbling." So, 
what was most afflictive, most unearthly — the really 
thorny parts, so to speak, of His Divine message, — 
that was only gradually unveiled to their eyes. For 
instance, — S. James and S. John ask to sit at the 
right hand of Christ in His kingdom, and share in 
His earthly power ; for of this world's pre-eminence 
did they think that, in some sort, His kingdom con- 
sisted. Now to these He does not then at once say 
positively, as afterwards He declared it, that His 
kingdom is not of this earth ; but shows plainly, that 
of whatever nature it is, there are elements, belong- 
ing to its attainment, might make it, to some minds, 
a no great object of desire. And then, He goes on 
to speak mysteriously of His cup and of His bap- 
tism ; and assures them that " the chief among them 
must be as their servant." So much only, then, as 
they can bear He imparts to them. He does not 
tell them that His baptism was to be a baptism of 
blood. 

Again. All S. Peter's history till our Saviour's 
death is marked by a gentle drawing him on to faith 
and a higher appreciation of the nature of Christ's 
Person and kingdom ; and such a gradual discipline 



IX.] THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 145 

as would serve to correct the evil tendencies of, as 
yet, a too fervid and unchastened spirit. All the 
apostles, indeed, underwent a preparation against 
the great trial day when the Cross of Christ — that 
great cause of offence to the world — should be set, 
for the first time, manifestly in its naked and severe 
simplicity before their eyes ; and how necessary was 
this loving provision, we see in the alarm which the 
sight of it, when it was at length presented before 
them in the sufferings of a Crucified Saviour, pro- 
duced on their minds. 

Now, just as were the apostles in training against 
this event, so was Mary Magdalene from the time 
of her release from the possession of the seven devils 
under a like discipline. Christ's present end and 
aim, in affording her so many opportunities of pro- 
gressing in the saintly life, was to prepare her against 
that great day when the repulsive sight of His Cross 
must be exhibited to the world. A progress is ac- 
cordingly discernible in her attainment of those 
Christian graces which adorn her character. First, 
we contemplate her as liberated from the power of 
Satan ; then as strengthened to the abandonment of 
former ways and companions — next, as in her firm 
reception of the gospel, and the exhibition of her 
great love and devotion to Jesus Christ. Soon, we 
mark how, desirous of obtaining the privilege and 
blessing of a more constant reception of His Divine 
instructions — a more intimate acquaintance with 
the great work He is prosecuting, she wholly devotes 

L 



146 THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. [SERM. 

herself to His service and ministers with other holy 
women to His necessities : how she chooses, in 
short, what we should speak of as a more exclu- 
sively religious life, and what the gospel calls that 
good part which is not to be taken from those who 
embrace it. And up to this time, contemplating as 
she did, the daily proofs of His power to Whose 
cause she had devoted herself, we may suppose how 
great her pleasure in the extension of His fame ; so 
as almost to create in her a sense of earthly happi- 
ness and security. Well might she think while she 
had Him for her friend (and she might look to have 
Him long) what harm could approach her? But 
now the heavy hand of affliction is laid upon her, 
a beloved brother falls sick ; the Divine Healer is 
away (surely that Healer was purposely in mercy to 
her away !) and that brother dies. Well, this trouble 
and grief of heart is happily removed ; but soon it 
was evident that this was only a preparation for sor- 
row still to come. She was to be taught how truly 
joys and sorrows in life commingle ; nay, that the 
true path of life is, as it were, through the gates of 
death ; that the rewards of the next life are to be 
purchased only by dying to the pleasures of this. 
And accordingly the Holy Spirit bids her make 
preparations against Christ's burial. Yes ; her 
Saviour, her Counsellor, the Great Healer Who 
had withdrawn Himself from her but for a short 
while in a time of extremity, was now going to be 
removed altogether. Thus Christ graciously works 



IX.] THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 147 

with her, and causes the joys of life gradually to 
assume in her eyes a more chastened complexion ; 
and thus the vanity of earthly things, even of the 
dearest ties, is disclosed to her. And now, at length, 
the naked Cross and the Suffering Redeemer is the 
picture she is brought to behold. He Whom she 
anointed for a Kins:, now reigns indeed a Kins: : but 
His elevation and His throne is a Cross. 

And while this sad tragedy was proceeding, in 
what position do we find S. Mary Magdalene ? We 
are told that she, with the others, " stood by the 
Cross of Jesus ;" and we may remember that before 
she stood there, as S. Matthew, S. Mark, and S. 
Luke inform us, she had been " beholding Him afar 
off." Here, then, is a double action from which we 
are enabled to draw an important lesson. For to 
contemplate the Cross of Jesus, and to stand by the 
Cross of Jesus, may be said to sum up the whole of 
Christ's religion ; that is, first to understand — 
realize what is meant by that strange and sad spec- 
tacle of the suffering Lord of life, as it flashes across 
the world's eye ; and next, to embrace the sublime 
truths it teaches, In other words, we have in this 
spectacle as well the whole of what we bave to learn, 
as the whole of what we have to do. Corresponding 
with which division is the saying of our Blessed 
Lord, " If any man will be My disciple, let him take 
up his cross," — -that is, learn the doctrines of the 
Cross ; " and follow Me," — that is, obey the pre- 
cepts it teaches. 

l2 



148 THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. [SERM. 

What is it then, my brethren, to look at the Cross 
of Christ ? It is to gaze upon a deeply sorrowful 
sight. Where shall we behold suffering more afflic- 
tive ? For if we should chance to think it falls 
short of any other punishment in intensity of bodily 
pain ; it will more than exceed it in acuteness of 
mental anguish. But surely, most grievous were 
the pains our Divine Lord sustained even in the 
body. Think of the scourgings before His Cruci- 
fixion ; think of the oppressive weight of the Cross 
borne by Him to Calvary, under which He was 
obliged to succumb, all weak and worn out as He 
was ; first, by the blood sweat in the garden ; and 
next with His watching through that long night of 
trial, under the apprehension of the dread conflict of 
the coming day. Think of this ; then of the rough 
handling of a rude soldiery ; of His frail form cast 
upon the recumbent wood ; and of the nails, as they 
pierce His all-blessed feet and hands, parts in which 
feeling is, in the highest degree, acute. Think well 
of the lingering nature of that death. Think of the 
tenderness and delicacy of that body exceeding the 
measures of all other men, — for sin blunts in our 
coarser natures the sense of pain ; then of His great 
thirst ; and of the keen air searching His wounds ; 
and, indeed, of all those intense and agonizing pains, 
the greatness of which He would not, even by use of 
the medicated cup, diminish. Think of all this, and 
of far more than this which we might add to heighten 
our sense of the bodily pain He underwent ; and we 



IX.] THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 149 

shall not easily imagine that even here the sons of 
men have ever surpassed, if, indeed, they have 
equalled, His power of endurance. 

But when we come to pourtray His mental an- 
guish, He leaves all other competitors for the 
honours of the Cross far behind Him. Think of the 
ignominy of that hated instrument of torture, and 
that accounted so by all mankind : that none but 
the worst malefactors were condemned thereto ; this, 
by the Gentile law ; and by the Jewish law, " Cursed 
is every man that hangeth upon a tree." So odious, 
indeed, was the Cross of Christ, that this became 
the very pretext by which the Greek and the Jew 
judged it a thing utterly impossible that Christ's 
religion could be a true Revelation. As the Jew had 
said "No good can come from Nazareth; so now 
to the Jew, the Cross was a stumblingblock, — to 
the Greeks, foolishness." What good could come 
from a stock so detested — the tree which all men 
abhorred ? 

Again, the Cross to Him is in a more than usual 
degree afflictive, by reason of the greatness of His 
Person. The greater the person, the higher the 
rank, — the less expected, the more felt an indignity. 
He came with the pretensions of a king, He was 
received and treated as a malefactor. And His 
words show how keenly He felt His treatment, "Be 
ye come out as against a thief?" 

It was afflictive too, in that He really felt Him- 
self exposed in an unutterable degree to His 



150 THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. [SERM. 

Father's wrath. Personally, He had not incurred 
this wrath ; but that flesh in which He now taber- 
nacled, which He had taken up into the Godhead, 
that had offended God. And He felt how He had 
attached to Himself, in a measure, its liabilities. 
He was jealous that a creature, of whose nature He 
partook, should have offended God. And He 
knew that the whole weight of that wrath must 
needs fall upon Him ; that He alone, out of the 
whole wide universe, must be singled out to sustain 
the fury and the horror of the Divine wrath. 
There is something in this too deep for man's line 
to fathom. But how great must have been His 
extremity at this pass, we may know by that ex- 
ceeding bitter cry, " My God, My God, why hast 
THOU forsaken Me?" 

It was afflictive, because it was a public judg- 
ment pronounced upon Him by God Himself in 
the face of the whole world. God's own Ministers, 
their power being of God, — the chief Priests for the 
Jewish, and Pontius Pilate for the Gentile world, 
these adjudge Him solemnly to death. 

But volumes would not suffice to describe the 
sorrows of the blessed Cross of Jesus. It is enough, 
my brethren, if for our profit, we are enabled to 
pourtray the greater features of this unknown 
agony. It is enough, if we may say of it, This is 
the Cross, the true type and pattern of that Cross, 
which the Christian is to take up, to all ages. 
For our own individual bearing, it may be con- 



IX.] THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 151 

structed of less weight, but ever this the fashion of 
it ; and ever these the materials of which it is 
composed — sufferings, either bodily or mental, self- 
humiliation, resignation to the will of God, a sacri- 
fice of body and soul to the service of Christ Jesus. 
And now, you are bid, with Mary Magdalene, 
to look at and feast your eyes upon that spec- 
tacle of sorrow. But why look upon it? Why, 
because Mary beheld afar off, should we deem it 
our part to do so likewise ? First, then, because 
in one way or other we must look upon it. And 
next, because we derive all excellence through 
trouble and suffering, of which the Cross is but a 
figure. We must look upon the Cross. "The 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until 
now," saith S. Paul, and in some sort, it has so 
continued to groan, although Christ's religion 
came to remove in part the burden. Though there 
be a way in which the sorrows of the creation come 
to us sanctified, yet it is sorrow still. Even inani- 
mate nature bears the impress of pain. 1 The winds 
still sigh out their mournful plaint, and the trees of 
the forest, now with low moaning murmurings, and 
now with fierce rushing cries, bewail man's fall ; 
or, in their sorrowing sounds, anticipate that day 
when, amidst the crash and din of a ruined world, 
" the elements shall melt with fervent heat," and 
"the heavens be rolled together as a scroll." The 
sea, that mighty charnel-house, with hoarse and 
troubled voice, counts o'er her unburied dead, and 
1 See Appendix. 



152 THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. [SERM. 

anon lashes herself into wrath at thought of the 
vast caverns which still yawn in unsoothed empti- 
ness for fresh victims. The sun does but run its 
course from the east to sink with ruddy glow in the 
west, blushing at the littleness, the earthiness, and 
the sinfulness he has, in that running, been made to 
look upon. Even the solid earth, that on its bosom 
bears city, and palace, quakes under the apprehen- 
sion of that day when " it and the works therein 
shall be burned up." 

But come we to nature animate and what do we 
see ? On all sides of us, the very condition of exist- 
ence, is pain. Take but one instance, the progress 
of man from his childhood. What suffering is 
there at births ! what pain and uneasiness an infant 
as well occasions as experiences ; and should it live, 
how many are the risks and accidents it has soon to 
pass through ! But " many are only born," as the 
author of the Holy Dying says, " that they may be 
able to die." Then, who shall satisfy the vague 
yearnings of boyish years, which alternate between 
extravagances of feeling and petulant disappoint- 
ment ? Then, how much of man's future progress 
depends upon exertions, which yet, at any time, 
may be overstrained and plunge him into violent 
illness. And where shall we stop in that fearful 
catalogue of evils to which flesh is heir ? Seldom 
is the body in ease ; either it is too heated in sum- 
mer, or suffers from chill in winter. Spring and 
autumn have too their particular ills, and send 
throngs of men and women to their last long homes. 



IX.] THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 153 

Again, society is ever manifesting its internal trou- 
bles and throes. Look at the uprootings of govern- 
ments : look at the festering sores which every large 
city nourishes within itself, only to prey upon their 
feeder : look at the heaps of frightful crime, the 
numerous accidents by fire and otherwise,, great 
losses in trade or by speculation. Consider the 
many grievous disappointments, loss of favour, loss 
of friends. Think of the animosities, the misunder- 
standings, the heartburnings ; yea, the sorrows of 
all sorts, crosses laid some upon one person, some 
on another, now at this time, now at that. 

Ought we then to refuse to look upon a spectacle 
to which a Merciful God has so plainly invited our 
attention ? But you will say, it is a happy joyous 
world after all : if there is much sorrow in it ; yet 
there is also much happiness. Admitted. And it 
is because, my brethren, there is much happiness in 
the world that I speak thus ; and wish to point out 
God's warning, which you might otherwise be per- 
suaded to overlook, that our cup of happiness 
cannot be full here. Rather we would teach, that 
happiness was given here that, in some sort, we 
might practise how to decline rather than to accept 
it. And if this seem strange, let us come to the 
next reason for looking on the Cross, which, per- 
haps, may remove the difficulty that some may 
think is involved in so hard a saying. 

We must look upon the Cross, because we derive 
all excellence through trouble and suffering, of 



154 THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. [SERM. 

which the Cross is but a type. There is, con- 
fessedly, a majesty and dignity in sorrow and trial, 
and in all those labours of man that exact human 
suffering and intense exertions as the price of suc- 
cess which, in the highest degree, command the 
admiration and sympathies of men. We may envy, 
and we may wonder at the prosperity of our fellows ; 
but if we observe ourselves, it is not riches or even 
influence which command our heartfelt respect, 
and call forth our liveliest sympathies. The sight 
of happiness, for instance, at a feast, is a spectacle 
that far less interests than sorrow, and a spare 
board, and a struggling family. Again, what delights 
the youthful reader (may I not add the old as well 
as the young?) so much as tales of suffering, acts 
of intrepidity and fortitude, the warrior's wreath, 
and the martyr's crown? Yes, all the ingenuous 
promptings of man's heart are on the side of the 
heroical. All true philosophy and true religion, 
ancient and modern, have taught that there is no 
considerable degree of virtue apart from sorrow and 
afflictive dispensations : but for the Christian religion, 
suffering is the characteristic badge of all her dis- 
ciples. " Set up her banners ;" and what are they 
but crosses ? Everywhere the Christian soldier is 
bidden look to the Cross, and bear the Cross. 
Whether by their own, whether by a friendly or by 
an unfriendly hand, that brand of suffering must 
somehow be obtained. For from the very first, it 
was the stamp and impress Christ's religion took. 



IX.] THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 155 

The doctrine of the Cross was, indeed, ever in the 
world, under every system of religion, but it was after 
a hidden manner, — the world did not confess it. 
Whereas, the principle which human systems re- 
jected or made little account of, Christianity, seizing 
upon it as a distinguishing truth, made it its own. 
" The world is full of crosses," it said. Wherefore, 
if not by God's will ? Wherefore God's will ? For 
the probation of man. Henceforth, then, to us 
my brethren, let the banner of the Lord, when 
unfurled, display a Cross. Yea, and the Lord 
Himself first bears it. Wherefore Christ Him- 
self sets to His seal that the Cross is His religion ; 
and that His followers must crucify themselves to 
the world as He has given them an example. 
And hence it is that Holy Scripture speaks so often 
of "the preaching of the Cross;" of "Christ 
crucified;" of "the offence of the Cross;" of 
" enemies to the Cross of Christ." 

Yes, my brethren, let us look at the Cross. 
It is our Blessed Saviour Whom we see hanging 
there. There we see the theatre on which, for man's 
sake, He performed the greatest act of virtue this 
world has ever looked upon. There we see to what 
heights of perfect endurance man's nature has been 
enabled to arrive. There we see God's great hatred 
of sin. There we see the perfect satisfaction for 
sin. There we see the depth of man's fall, and the 
horrible perfidy of those who can crucify, by a 
renewal of their old sins, the Son of God afresh. 



156 THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. [SERM. 

There, too, we see God's love in that He gave His 
Own Son up to death, and to such a death. Let it 
be that He is ever so severe in judgment ; yet there 
we behold His loving mercy beaming through 
severity, with an unspeakable radiance. There we 
see, too, the love of the Son towards us. And if 
(we are led to think) the Father could give His 
Son for us ; what will not He, to the uttermost, 
give to His brethren, Who could give Himself ? 

We must then, my brethren, look upon the Cross 
of Jesus. It is the great type upon which our 
Almighty Father has designed His children to rise 
to His own perfection : even that we should follow 
Christ " Who was made perfect in that He suf- 
fered." But S. Mary Magdalene did not content 
herself with a mere contemplation ; she was led on 
further. " She stood by the Cross of Jesus." She 
had at first looked on afar off. All that she saw, 
tended to perplex, to shock her ; but her thoughts 
and feelings, so far from scaring her away from Jesus, 
bring her up to His side, to His very Cross. Yes, 
undeterred by the malicious eye of the chief rulers, 
she shows undisguisedly that she is one of His most 
sympathizing followers. And this well points out to 
what heights of piety and spiritual excellence Mag- 
dalene was fast attaining, by comparison with the 
other disciples. With the one exception of S. John, 
the three Maries are in this agonizing scene alone. 
While the rest, disheartened, fled; the women alone 
stood firm, as though willing to contemplate calmly 



IX.] THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 157 

and embrace in all its stern repulsiveness that stan- 
dard of suffering which our Saviour had raised. 
And thus by their courageous adherence to it, they 
were enabled to restore confidence to their waving 
and timid brethren. 

It would seem, then, that our looking at the Cross 
shall profit us little, if we do not with Magdalene go 
up to and stand by the Cross. And we will do this, 
my brethren, — may it so please our Almighty Fa- 
ther to endue us with the grace, both in doctrine 
and in practice. 

In doctrine ; for there are many standards at this 
present raised in the Name of Christ, and trumpets 
many giving " an uncertain sound." My brethren, 
would you wish to know who are the true leaders of 
the hosts of Zion ? Would you gladly know the 
marks by which you may discern a true from a false 
guide of souls ? See whether, when he unfurls his 
banner, the signs of the Redeemer's Cross are there. 
Ask, that is, which is the doctrine that bears most 
clearly on it the stamp of earnestness, and self-deny- 
ing godliness. Be assured that all untrue doctrine, 
sooner or later, especially in these our days, betrays 
its emptiness by its laxity and self-indulgent maxims. 
A teaching which does not as an essential preach 
cost and sacrifice, profits nothing to the saving of 
souls. By the preaching of the Cross of Christ 
alone can we be enabled with S. Mary Magdalene 
to stand by the Cross of Christ. 

And in practice also, of standing by the Cross, 



158 THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. [SERM. 

how much might be said would time allow ! How 
seldom do we get ourselves heartily to embrace and 
stand firm to the Cross. In no respect is man's in- 
genuity so fully shown as in the skill with which he 
avoids occasions of denying self. We are ever pro- 
mising to ourselves great things ; but as the oppor- 
tunity offers for exertion, strange and unlooked-for 
difficulties seem to arise, and all our good resolutions 
and stern purposes are suffered to dissolve with a 
speedy thaw. And why is this ? but that we do 
not cultivate the habit of crucifying ourselves and 
affections to the world. Our Cross is not to be 
borne upon us as it were some holy day garment, but 
should be carried about with us daily. 

Why is it, for instance, that to many of us, such 
a sacred season 1 as this will have passed away and 
leave us just where we were before, — our lives no 
more pure and holy, our hearts no more alive and 
tender to the reception of the truths of the Gospel 
than when the season first commenced ? Why ? 
Simply because we do not look upon the sufferings 
of Jesus as in any sense demanding our imitation. 
We make no positive efforts in taking up the Cross 
and following Christ. We propose no one set in- 
stance of self-denial for our performance ; and there- 
fore, since we never actually by small efforts, it may 
be, try to deny ourselves, we can get to know little 
of the power of Christ Crucified in our hearts. Let 

1 The last time this sermon was preached was on the Good 
Friday of this year, 1848. 



IX.] THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 159 

us begin then, my brethren, with all earnestness and 
with all true diligence and sincerity, to acquire this 
habit of looking at and standing by the Cross of 
Jesus. Let us begin by contradicting our wills in 
some of those things which are most pleasing, and 
by adopting others which are most displeasing to our 
minds and feelings, wheresoever we may by so doing 
be a comfort to man or advance the glory of God. 
And these smaller sacrifices will pave the way for 
those greater acts of denial which the Lord may 
demand at our hands ; that eventually, after having 
fought the good fight, He may reward us with the 
crown of eternal life. 

Perhaps one of the most crying sins of these times 
is a want of faith in the power of the Cross. We 
cannot get ourselves to believe that what men did 
in former days for Christ, they can by any possi- 
bility be brought to do now. For instance, we are 
awakening to a sense of the deplorable condition in 
which large portions of our fellow-men at home and 
abroad are living without God in the world ; and we 
look around for the proper ways to help them. 
What is our first thought ? the means, the ways, — in 
short, money. Well, but what we really want are 
hearts, — men with Christian hearts. The holy men 
who first converted this land were poor men, un- 
provided with any more than the absolute necessa- 
ries of life. The holy apostles took their lives in 
their hands, and lived and died poor men. Such 
were the instruments that Christ and His Apostles 



160 THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. [SERM. 

used, and we know how eminently they were suc- 
cessful. I will not say that missions conducted on 
a different principle have not had their blessing 
from God in their degree ; nor should anything now 
said be supposed to refer to the state of a settled 
Church; but we all well know that the Gospel 
principle of a mission is simply set forth in our Sa- 
viour's words : "Go your ways ; behold I send you 
forth as lambs among wolves. Carry neither purse, 
nor scrip, nor shoes, and into whatsoever house ye 
enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And in the 
same house remain, eating and drinking such things 
as they give, for the labourer is worthy of his hire." 
They were to be unprotected and exposed to danger 
in some degree as lambs are among wolves ; they 
were to be unprovided for, and dependent upon those 
whom they taught ; they were to go with authority 
and a blessing ; they were to share in the riches or the 
poverty of the people among whom they laboured. 
We know this ; but strangely enough have not faith 
to act upon it. 

Surely there are men enough among us who, irre- 
spective of all personal considerations, would in this 
spirit go forth to the Lord's work, willing to count 
their lives but loss for Christ's sake. Would that 
this were fairly tried, — for hardly may we expect the 
doctrine of the Cross to be preached, with a due suc- 
cess among men, save through a manifest bearing of 
the Cross. The self-chosen poverty, self-humilia- 
tion, self-abandonment of the missionary, shall more 



IX.] THE CROSS THE TYPE OF CHRISTIANITY. 161 

recommend the Gospel to the heathen whether at 
home or abroad, than all other appliances whatso- 
ever. Learning, talent, a splendid establishment 
have little hold upon the mind in comparison with 
that obvious proof of sincerity in a teacher, — self- 
sacrifice and a life of sanctity. 

Finally, my brethren, let us open our eyes to the 
true character of this life and to the real objects of 
our sojourn here. And as affliction is sooner or later 
the portion of all men, let us determine to antici- 
pate its approach by our Christian bearing through- 
out life, by looking at, standing by, taking up, 
bearing about, embracing our Cross. 



M 



SERMON X. 

THE GRAVE OF CHRIST A TIPE OF THE 
CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 



S. Matt, xxvii. 61. 

And there was Mary Magdalene and the other 
Mary sitting over against the sepulchre. 

We are now called to look upon a picture of won- 
drous beauty and interest — the sight of those two 
women in their deep sorrow, who, out of all man- 
kind, are deemed worthy to gaze, with faith and 
hope, upon the stone that bars the entrance of that 
sepulchre from which is to come the world's Re- 
deemer. There they sit as mourners at the grave 
of Christ, the full sense of their loss only slowly 
breaking upon their minds. There they sit on the 
eve of that awful day of the mysterious darkness, 
when " the earth did quake and the rocks rent," 
the involuntary expression of nature's awe at the 
dreadful deed but just committed. There they sit, 
and the calm is all the more solemn and intense, 
by how much the scenes they had just witnessed 

m 2 



164 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

breathed violence and the wrath of man. There 
they sit, wrapt in thoughts, sad indeed, yet not 
unmingled with hope ; unable as it were to with- 
draw themselves from the subject of their mighty 
griefs. 

And what were their thoughts ? Indeed it is 
difficult to know where best to begin in the attempt 
to divine them ; for here was mixed so much that 
was of earth with so much that wears a heavenly 
aspect, — so much attachment to the Person of 
Christ in His Fleshly Presence with so much faith 
in His mission from on high, — so much grief at His 
death, with so much hope of His resurrection, — 
so much thought of His mangled body, and of that 
" face so marred more than any man's," with so 
much of a present feeling that He was still in being, 
and that these woes were to issue in some great and 
unusual event of power and Divinity, that we may 
well pause in admiration at our task. And here, if 
the sentiments of Magdalene had harmonized with 
those entertained by the rest of the Apostles, our 
work had been the easier ; for it is not difficult to 
divine their less complex feelings. To their high 
expectations — their visions of earthly grandeur, had 
succeeded a blank of hopeless despondency. Those 
heights of greatness and of splendour, to which the 
nation of the Jews had attained under its greatest 
monarch, they had looked to see renewed ; nay, the 
magnificence of Solomon's reign was now to prove 
the type only of that glorious earthly kingdom of 



X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 165 

which they themselves were to be, in conjunction 
with the Me ssi as, the illustrious and favoured 
founders. Their Heaven-sprung Monarch was to 
have grasped the sceptre of the whole world, and to 
have regenerated mankind ; and they themselves, 
wielding the mighty arms of that awful power which 
they had seen so often exerted in subduing and 
controlling and changing nature's laws, were to have 
sat at the right hand of His Majesty, in the sublime 
character of benefactors to the whole human race. 

In this spirit had they trusted that the Saviour 
had been "He Who should have redeemed Israel." 
Although Christ had fully warned them beforehand 
that He was to suffer death, in His declarations that 
He must " be lifted up," must "give His life for 
the world," would go somewhere " whither they 
could not come," that "in a little while the world 
would see Him no more ;" yet, full of their own pre- 
conceived notions, they soon dismissed the strange 
and perplexing thoughts, which all such sayings of 
their Divine Master had, at the time of their utter- 
ance, suggested. They had chosen to prescribe 
what must be Christ's way of salvation, an earthly 
sovereignty ; and had not eye to see or heart to wish 
for any other. Hence, when their Lord was cruci- 
fied, the event was all astounding, and their con- 
fusion utter. Having lost the attainment of all 
that their hopes aimed at realizing, they felt, as yet, 
that they had lost everything. Such were the feel- 
ings of the Apostles generally. 



166 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

But altogether different were those of Mary 
Magdalene. From the first she appears to have ob- 
tained some insight into the mystery of the Lord's 
death. S. Luke says, "And the women also, 
which came with Him from Galilee, beheld the 
sepulchre and how the body was laid." We mark 
that all the company of women exhibited this 
amount of earnest affection towards the departed 
Christ ; but that Mary Magdalene and the other 
Mary did not merely behold, and then with the 
rest go away, but observed the tomb as it was 
closed up, and then, as S. Matthew tells us, " sat 
watching over against it." And for what other 
purpose does the Evangelist relate this, unless to 
draw our attention to the scene, that we may not 
think that all the disciples were in this matter so 
discomfited as the twelve? You may except, at 
least, he would remind us, two weak women, (and 
" the weak things of this world were to confound 
the strong,") who still believed that an act remained 
yet to be seen out in this sad drama. 

And this is the more evident from these con- 
siderations. Much as there is said of Mary Mag- 
dalene beyond what is recorded of most of the 
Apostles, we do not find her subject to any rebuke 
for having entertained mere secular notions con- 
cerning Christ's kingdom, as was the case with 
S. John and S. James on one occasion, and with 
S. Peter on another. Hence it is probable that, 
unlike them, she had not passionately formed any 



X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 167 

theory which she was not able to reconcile with her 
Lord's crucifixion and death. Indeed, we have the 
Saviour's words to warrant us in concluding that she 
anticipated His death. And, we may say this also, 
that in anointing Christ against His burial, she seems 
to have intimated her right appreciation of those parts 
of His teaching, which concerned not only His death, 
but His resurrection also. When Christ made it the 
ground in part of the defence of Mary's act in anoint- 
ing Him, that she did it against His burial, He surely 
did not mean that, in so doing, she had been made 
unwittingly the prophet of His burial. Rather, with 
a view to defend her against the charge of waste He 
proves, that, of purpose, anticipating the day of His 
burial, she had performed that action. This, then, 
was a singular insight into His teaching 1 not attained 
to by the rest : but why she should have conceived 
that this anointing ought to be performed before His 
death, we can hardly say ; if she had not conceived 
also that some remarkable event would prevent all 
use of precious ointments at or before the interment, 
— that He would, in fact, as He had loosed Lazarus 
from the bonds of death, in like manner, raise Him- 
self ; and so render any embalmings, at the usual 
time, unnecessary and unmeaning. She might well 
believe, that if He were about to rise again, He 
would neither countenance nor acknowledge any 
such services to His body as might intimate 
its subjection to corruption. And if He was 
1 See Appendix. 



168 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

not to be embalmed at His death, she might 
think it her part to anoint Him on the earliest 
occasion that might offer, since He would need 
anointing, at some time ; for strong were the feelings 
of the Jews as to the incompleteness of a burial, 
where the body was not duly embalmed. 1 

Nor must we omit to take into consideration the 
corroboration which is afforded to this view by the 
great privileges accorded to Mary Magdalene — as, 
first, the Lord's appearance to her before all other 
of His disciples : and next, the remarkable fact that 
she was made to convey the first tidings of His 
resurrection to the Apostles ; and so Bishop An- 
drewes says, " A great honour, all things considered, 
to serve in an angel's place ; to do that at His 
second birth that at His first birth an angel did." 2 
Both of these were marvellous distinctions, vouch- 
safed to her in consequence of her discernment 
and faith ; and hence one Evangelist specially says, 
"Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of 
the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene." 
Nor will the rest of her conduct, when duly con- 
sidered, be found inconsistent with what has been 
now advanced. When the women find the stone 
removed, she runneth and cometh to Simon Peter 
and to John, and said, " They have taken away the 
Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where 
they have laid Him." She considered their present 
state of feeling, and that they were not in a condition to 
1 Williams on the Resurrection, p. 14. 2 Andrewes. Vol. III. p. 5. 









X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 169 

entertain new hopes, and spoke to them accordingly, 
— spoke of her Lord as a corpse, and not as though 
He were risen. It would have only irritated their 
wounded and mortified feelings, if at this time she 
had given vent to all that her hopes had now con- 
ceived. But mark her way of speaking, " The 
Lord," or " my Lord." ! She says not " They have 
taken the body," but speaks of Him with the same 
love and respect as when living. The scandal of 
His death she suffers not to abate her love. As 
Bishop Andrewes says, " It was a most opprobrious, 
ignominious, shameful death He suffered ; such as 
in the eyes of the world any would have been 
ashamed to own Him" at all, — much less as a Lord ; 
but " she acknowledged Him, is neither ashamed 
nor afraid to continue that title still." 2 ^Yhat more 
evident then than her faith ! To her He was alive 
still. Again, of the two apostles, S. John now saw 
and believed ; but, notwithstanding, John goes away 
as well as Peter. She, however, remains behind, 
waiting anxiously for some further demonstration ; 
and is not disappointed. Angels appear in the se- 
pulchre to her and the women, and speak to them 
of Jesus ; but absorbed in the search for her Lord, 
neither the suddenness, the awfulness, nor the great 
glory of the vision troubled her. And here again we 
have to notice, that whereas the women all immedi- 
ately depart with fear and great joy to communicate 
the intelligence to the rest of the disciples, Magda- 
1 S. John xx. 2 and 13. 2 Andrewes. Vol. III. p. 13. 



170 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

lene's mind and affections are still on the stretch ; 
and if, indeed, she left the sepulchre at this time 
with the rest, she yet speedily returns to it. 

This sentiment and hope of the resurrection 
was not however, we may confess, so predominant 
in her mind, but that she exhibits some weak- 
nesses apparently inconsistent with it. For we 
have S. John relating the whole interview with cir- 
cumstance ; and his account shows plainly how 
Mary's large hopes were strangely combined with 
earthly yearnings. "Mary stood without at the sepul- 
chre weeping" : (what a tumult of opposite feelings it 
is sometimes sets us on weeping !) Again, when 
addressing the supposed Gardener, she offers herself 
to bear the body away. Now the Angels had told 
her He was alive, and she had longed for and waited 
to see the sight of Him living ; and yet she spoke of 
Him as a corpse. Was it a weakness then ? And 
did her mind float between hope and faith on the one 
hand and disbelief on the other ? Not so ! but either 
she might well think it to little purpose to talk of 
Jesus as of a living person ; or the same confusion of 
mind, which led her to think she was strong enough 
to bear a corpse, might lead her to speak of that as a 
dead body which yet she hoped was a living one ; or 
we may explain it thus — the impression made on her 
sense by the sight of His mangled corpse, that could 
not pass away. Before she could realize Him as per- 
forming the functions of the living, she must, until 
she see Him living, be liable to talk of Him as she 






X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 171 

saw Him dead. Suffice it, then, that she was not at 
this time altogether, like the other apostles, utterly 
despondent. She was full, indeed, of distress of mind, 
full of perplexity, full of pain that her Lord had 
been withdrawn from her sight, full of the trouble 
which uncertainty conveys to the mind, — clinging 
under the present flooding of earthly feelings at her 
loss to earthly thoughts and memories ; yet not 
without hope for the future. 

But now to pass from these considerations, affect- 
ing her belief of the resurrection of her Lord, let us 
contemplate her again, as she was brought before our 
eyes, at the first, sitting over against her Lord's sepul- 
chre, overwhelmed with sorrow, her hopes buried with 
Him, yet with Him as living, the words of prophecy 
perhaps brooding in her mind, suggesting hopes 
and reasons for joy, which speak of Him as " a garden 
enclosed — a spring shut up — a fountain sealed;" 1 
emblems all of life, energizing in concealment. 

A brighter hope, too, might kindle within her as 
she caught a thought from the setting sun and the 
fast waning day, and considered how things in nature 
droop to revive again ; how the sun, with expiring 
glow, dips into the dark caverns of the West, to rise 
yet more beautiful to run its race from its home in 
the East ; how to eve the death of day succeeds the 
dead still of night only to usher in the birth of the 
coming morn ; how autumnal beauty sinks into 
winter barrenness to revive again to spring's sweet 

1 Cant. iv. 12. 



172 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

hopes and summer's lovely maturity ! She might 
think how the present vegetation is the fruit of the 
former decay : and how some creatures of the animal 
world pass as it were through a seeming death into 
a state of renewed and higher existence. Thus, in 
the midst of her sorrows, she strove to keep alive a 
faith that longed to discern the faintest movements 
towards the resurrection of her Lord. 

My brethren, the Church's faithful sons have like 
Magdalene many times had to sit over against the 
sepulchre of Christ, in the several periods of her 
history ; and from the dark tomb of a seeming death 
has He oft risen in perfect beauty to comfort His 
drooping children. In this scene of the two women 
at the sepulchre of Christ is pictured to us the 
mourning Church of the Redeemer, ever seeking 
with sustaining hope the traces of the Lord of her 
love. Not that Christ is not always with His 
Church. He ever fulfils His promise to be with 
her to the end of the world ; but how oft as here 
does He seem to conceal Himself from us as in the 
silence of the tomb ! How oft have the hearts of 
the faithful almost failed them, as they stood by, 
watching the mass of error under which some great 
vital truth was lying entombed ; and have deemed 
that that end of the world was come when the Lord 
must take His final departure. Still they hoping 
against hope, clinging with Magdalene with a holy 
unshaken faith to every vestige of the track which 
might lead them to those clefts of the rock He has 



X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 173 

made His secret hiding-place, He is compelled by- 
force of their love and zeal to come forth, and with 
the effulgence of His presence cause His Church 
again to glow with an intenser light before the eyes 
of men. 

Not as though either the Church had been found 
wanting; or had been unequal to the task assigned her; 
or had not kept to her first love and maintained the 
sum of truth from the first. But a law imposed re- 
straint upon her. The Church, while ever full of light, 
gives light to men only as the Lord of Light ordains 
her ; and it was His will that her light should shine 
by an economy and as men could bear. He suffered 
her not from her bosom to pour forth at once all 
the rich fecundity which He had lodged in that am- 
ple treasure-house. Her own resources were un- 
known to her. She was to be as a well before she 
became an ocean of life ; and the waters of healing 
sprang up as from a hidden source. Christ re- 
served the times in His own hands. And it was 
only when the enemy of souls poured the plentiful 
seeds of dark error on the earth, that then with the 
old was our holy mother the Church suffered to put 
forth her new treasures. 

Long and severe were those conflicts maintained 
by her in earlier days against the great enemy of 
mankind, whose chief mark was to strike at the two 
doctrines so vitally important, the Divinity and Hu- 
manity of Christ. That which a crowd of heresiarchs 
taught in divers times and divers places through 



174 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

three centuries, took root and gained ground and oc- 
cupied the earth ; and the Church seemed to be 
fast withdrawing her light, and the dominion of dark- 
ness everywhere usurping her place. Arius, Apol- 
linaris, Nestorius, Eutyches, these are the four 
leaders from whom sprung the four deadly heresies 
which threatened to overwhelm the Church of 
Christ ; and, but for His watchful providence, to 
have banished it from the world. Says the vene- 
rable Hooker: 1 "This was the plain condition of 
those times : the whole world against Athanasius, 
and Athanasius against it ; half a hundred years 
spent in doubtful trial which of the two in the end 
would prevail — the side which had all; or else the part 
which had no friend, but God and death, the one a 
defender of his innocence, the other a finisher of all 
his troubles." When then " the body of this death" 
threatened the Church, the four first General Coun- 
cils brought the true faith to a full light ; " the 
learned and sound in faith," as the same writer says, 
" explaining such things, as heresy went about to 
deprave." Thus were the dark caverns, to which 
men had consigned our Saviour and His doctrine, 
explored, the pestilential vapours of Arianism broken 
up and driven back, the body of truth disclosed, 
landmarks henceforth set up to guide the unwary, 
and clear paths made where the past experience 

1 Hooker, v. c. 42. §5 and 6. The first six sections of this 
chapter may be read with advantage in connection with the above 
reflections. 



X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 175 

suggested their necessity. What if, in such evil 
times, the true sons of the Church had yielded to a 
hopeless, lifeless despondency, and refused to believe 
that Christ in those dark times was true to His 
promise to be with His Church to the end of the 
world ? 

Let us next mark that time, so eventful with con» 
sequences, when Western Europe, the seat of all that 
was active and influential in Christendom, was over- 
run bv the barbarian tribes of the north, when the 
old Roman Empire was no longer able to preserve 
itself under the press of " the wild waters of that 
mighty inundation of nations " 1 which from their un- 
ceasing now had long threatened its very exist- 
ence. It was at this time, " the transition from de- 
clining antiquity to modern times," growing oat of 
the ruins of the ancient world, when all the old bonds 
which linked society together were fast dissolving 
and giving way to anarchy, that the Christian empire, 
which had long been united with the old Roman 
power in the east and west, appeared to be falling 
too under its mighty ruins. Religion, letters, laws, 
were all threatened with destruction. But soon the 
faithful were given to discern the innate and self- re- 
viving power of that immortal institution ; and not 
only did it succeed in maintaining the place assigned 
to it in God's Providence as the religious instructress 
of the nations, but commuted the barbaric elements 
which threatened its existence into a part of its own 
1 Schlegel. Philosophy of History, 345. Bohn. 



176 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

life. Nay, by a plastic energy peculiar to her, she 
became the means of moulding the old Roman ele- 
ment of social unity with the free and manly insti- 
tutions and customs of the Gothic tribes ; and so first 
introduced into the world a system of government 
and state principles distinctively Christian. Thus a 
threatened destruction was the prelude to the highest 
and most dignified position the kingdom of Christ 
has as yet enjoyed, in the power she then possessed 
of giving Christian laws to the nations. 

Again, when throughout Christendom one uni- 
versal cry of Simony went up to heaven, and the 
Church seemed to have forsaken Her first love, and 
to be in the embraces of death, — then, again, the 
faithful saw the energies of one mighty mind de- 
voted to the restoration of the whole of Christen- 
dom. Raised up in times when, if in any, the sons of 
the Church might fear for the faith, with a prophet's 
eye of discernment he was blessed to know the cure, 
which the evil of the times demanded, and with a steady 
firm hand to apply it. Allow that the system which 
he made the instrument to correct the abuses of 
those days, is justly rejected by the present age ; yet 
shall we, because he used a weapon, a rod for the 
nations at that special time fitted to his hands by 
Providence, refuse from force of old prejudices to 
acknowledge the power of Almighty God working 
in His servant, who, while the faithful watched at 
the tomb of Christ, in which His body had been 
buried under the loads of a corrupt and wicked age, 



X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 177 

came like the Angel Messenger of God of old, and 
rolled away the stone, and once again Christ came 
forth and acknowledged His Bride. 1 

And if this be true of the Church Catholic, it 
will, in its degree, be applicable to branches of 
Christ's Church. We may not indeed say of 
branches of the Church, that " Christ will be with 
them severally, to the end of the world," in the 
same degree that these prophetic words are applied 
to the whole Church. We cannot confidently say 
that, whatever aspect a branch of Christ's Church 
wears of decay and death, yet that, it will surely 
revive. Yet if a positive belief may not be enter- 
tained, a reasonable hope may still be formed that, 
although disorganization and a sleep approaching 
unto death be visible in a particular Church, yet that 
that disorganization and that sleep may still be only 
the prognostics of renewed order and life. At least, 
we feel that what has been, may well be again. In 
our own Church, for instance, should any one be in- 
duced to give way to despondent feelings, arising out 
of the great difficulties of her present position and 
the discouragements which her best sons have to 
encounter ; yet, let it be well remembered that diffi- 
culties and troubles of a tenfold more alarming na- 
ture, has it been her happiness full oft to overcome. 
Study our ecclesiastical history in this point of view. 
What more hopeless than the condition of the 
Church of England as it promised to be under the 
1 See Appendix. 
N 



178 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST, [SERM. 

despotic reign of the Norman kings ? What would 
be said now if one sovereign, to follow the pleasures 
of the chase, should not scruple to destroy six and 
thirty mother churches, — or, if another should at 
his death be found retaining possession of the reve- 
nues of eleven Abbeys and five Bishoprics ; and 
should, for four years, keep the See of Canterbury 
vacant, and all for his own personal enrichment? 
Let us not forget, under such an iron tyranny it was 1 
that God's heritage in this land once suffered ; but 
praise be to God Who, in these dark times, raised 
up champions in the sacred cause of liberty and 
religion ! 

From those who rolled away the "great stone " 
which oppressed true religion in their age, let us 
now rapidly pass on to the period of the Refor- 
mation. In what a grave of corrupt teaching and 
practice was this Church buried long before the 
reign of Henry VIII. But from this coil of death 
was to be evolved the web of life. In that reign the 
rod of the Almighty began its course of chastise- 
ment, — a present affliction, that we might obtain an 
eventual peace. With its correction did peace im- 
mediately ensue, and order and right reason resume 
her sway ? Far from it. The Reformation in Eng- 
land was long in bearing the blessed fruits it was 
destined to mature in that dignified position to 
which our Church, in the reigns of James and 
Charles, rose after so long an obscuration. The 
1 See Appendix. 



X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCHES STRUGGLES. 179 

body of truth — of doctrine and of discipline, was 
all that time struggling with the destructive ele- 
ments which threatened oft to overwhelm her in 
the darkness of an adverse theology — but that half- 
smothered seedling of truth, the growth of which 
the venerable Hooker first watched and tended 1 . — 
and then the holy Andrewes watered — the martyr 
Laud at length brought to the full light of day. 
And what though our bright sun was darkened 
in its mid- day course by envious clouds, and soon 
sunk beneath the waves of a religion of fanaticism : 
it sunk only to rise with yet more resplendent 
beauty. What though those dark waters were 
stained by the blood of two sainted martyrs, and 
the regal and the sacerdotal image were at once 
blotted from the fair face of England's constitution : 
were they lost to us for ever? Nay, the blood 
of the martyrs was here as ever before " the seed 
of the Church." The spirit of Laud and Charles 
is with us still in the holy institutions which yet 
survive them. To the Lord's garner were then 
gathered two saints, who ever make intercession at 
the throne of God for that Church, which in life 
they loved unto the death. We have them still with 
us ; and but for their martyr-blood which (as poured 
out upon the altars of the Church's ruins) stopped 
the tide of concession ; we may hardly hope that 
the Christian religion could have been restored 
to that comparatively high theory of doctrinal pu- 
1 See Appendix. 

n2 



180 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

rity and Catholic practice, to which it advanced on 
the restoration of monarchy. 

But alas ! how soon again called to hide the light 
of her holy teachers, such as were the self- 
sacrificing Sancroft, the sainted Ken, from a people 
and an age all unworthy of such burning lights ! 
With the political benefits which the conclusion of 
the seventeenth century derived to this nation, we 
have little concern now. It is of the progress of 
religion alone of which we are now speaking ; and 
almost all earnest-minded persons are agreed that 
the teaching of the Church then suffered great in- 
jury, and that the seeds were then sown of that 
coldness and indifferentism towards definite truths, 
which unhappily now prevails to so alarming an 
extent. It is manifest, then, that a spiritual torpor, 
even in the body of Christ, and that torpor even 
deeper than this which some now mourn over, is a 
thing not so unexampled, that we should needs start 
at its appearance, and suspect the Divine life in 
the Church in which it is suffered. As well might 
we doubt the purity of the sun's rays, as they pass 
through and pervade a noxious atmosphere ; or as 
they penetrate the thick darkness of some charnel- 
house. With such thoughts on our minds, let us 
proceed to meet some of the difficulties of these 
times. 

And some there have been of late, my brethren, 
who in their ardent zeal in a holy cause, have con- 
ceived that our Sion must, of necessity, at their 



X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH S STRUGGLES. 181 

first announcement of old forgotten truths, awake 
from her long sleep and put on her choicest robes. 
The venerable elder, abandoning the one settled 
mould of his ancient ways, was without complain- 
ing and with the graceful and ready ease of youth- 
ful versatility, of a sudden to adopt new habits and 
fall into new trains of thought ; and men grown 
old in authority, masters in Israel, were expected 
to experience a kind of new birth, and yet might not 
expostulate with Nicodemus of old, " Can a man 
enter a second time into his mother's womb and be 
born ?" These had laboured in the vineyard, and in 
their day wrought righteousness. In the Sanctuary of 
God they had blessed the people, preached the Word, 
dispensed Sacraments, promoted schemes of piety, 
and so won souls to Christ. They had acted ac- 
cording to the light of their day, and according 
to their measure. "With what feelings must they 
have viewed the conduct of some men who, while 
they had entered into their labours, — with an un- 
thankful spirit and with youthful and undisciplined 
pride of heart were conceiving that themselves alone 
were the men, and that no righteousness was wrought 
and no earnestness found among the priests of God 
before these latter days. How oft might they 
have bid us look to ourselves, lest having greater 
lights and higher privileges, we fulfil, with a smaller 
proportioned zeal, our heavier responsibilities. They 
looked, and naturally with some suspicion, on the 
new and untried, however well tempered, weapons 



182 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

they were expected to use. And what wonder if 
those, who entertained such nattering expectations 
of the sudden and general acceptance of the truths 
they taught, should, when they were disappointed, 
sink down in despondency, and get no further than 
to say with the disciples, — " We trusted that it had 
been He Which should have redeemed Israel?" 

Now, my dear brethren, it must be confessed that 
a tendency which has so fatally developed itself in 
some instances, may be the painful experience of 
many. In times when the most brilliant concep- 
tions of what should be the Church's meteor path 
have risen before the excited imaginations of many 
of her ardent children ; and when daily experience 
teaches us how much of disappointment is necessarily 
attendant in all her progress while militant here 
amidst the children of the world, — it is easy to fore- 
see how many there must be, who if they have not 
already been guilty of such folly and error, are yet 
now on the eve 1 of bursting out into rash and suicidal 
acts, in consequence of the frustration of their im- 
possible hopes. It is but reasonable, therefore, that 
we should endeavour to secure ourselves from those 
pitfalls of despondency which have proved so fatal 
to others. 

The cause, or at least one great cause, of our pre- 
sent dangers, lies in treading in the steps (as yet not 
planted in the footsteps of the Lord) of the twelve, 
and not in those of Mary Magdalene. It consists 
1 This sermon was preached in the year 1846. 



X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 183 

in a presumptuous predetermination as to the 
course in which Divine Providence ought to unfold 
its workings. Men have not in faith and pati- 
ence watched with the two sainted women at the 
sepulchre, waiting for the time which the Fa- 
ther hath reserved unto Himself, — but irritated, 
heart-sick from the disappointment of expectations 
which it was presumptuous of them with a fond 
confidence to entertain, they have risen up to sit 
aloof from the holy company it was heretofore their 
greatest delight to be found in. 

My brethren, let us beware of giving in to this or 
any such temper of mind. Let us not presume to 
say beforehand how God's providences must be ful- 
filled, or to harbour thoughts as to how He designs 
to shape our own or the Church's course in this 
world. Of how many men's errors is an impossibility 
the root ! Men are ever asking for systems free from 
imperfection and anomaly. And here we have some 
of our brethren stumbling because our Church 
is not in perfect unity with other Churches of 
Christ. These ask for what Christ so earnestly 
prayed, the unity of the brethren throughout the 
world — for unity, a blessing of the highest order ; but 
one which all analogy teaches us would hardly, in its 
pristine integrity, long stay on the earth. And this 
Christ knew, and the proneness of men to division ; 
and therefore it was He so earnestly prayed. Unity, 
abstractedly considered, is the greatest possible good ; 
but are there no conceivable circumstances which 



J 84 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST [SERM. 

might induce the Almighty to admit in His Church 
a deviation from the strict observance of a principle, 
although He gives it the fullest sanction that law 
can possess? Might He not countenance, as a 
punishment for abuse and neglect of blessings, a 
state of things brought on by man's wilfulness, 
though at variance with the law of His higher 
will ? For instance, was not God angry with Ba- 
laam for going, and yet bade him go V Did He 
not complain that Israel should desire a king, 
and yet grant one to their desire ? 2 Why should 
we say of the Church that she must, of necessity, 
assume this or that appearance in all ages ? that 
this note of her glory lost or obscured, all is lost ? 
Who shall tell the amount of disorder it may be 
. considered, by the Divine Providence, needful to 
tolerate in any given system into which the aberra- 
tions of man are allowed to enter ? Nor would we 
be thought in speaking thus to be trampling down the 
Church's hedge. God forbid that any of us should 
lightly account of the least stake that marks her bor- 
der — should, like Esau, for a mess of pottage, sell 
any of her precious inalienable rights ! — but one 
thing it is to despise what we have, and another 
to acknowledge God's hand in the present denial of 
the blessing of a perfect unity, whether amongst our- 
selves or with the rest of Christendom. 

1 Num. xxii. .20, 22, 32, 34, 35. 

2 1 Sam. xii. 17. 1 Sam. viii. 6, 7, 8, 9. 



X.] A TYPE OF THE CHURCH'S STRUGGLES. 185 

Finally, of this, my brethren, let us be sure, that 
no one mends his condition by seeking unity and 
discipline in any other branch of the Catholic 
Church, than that in which he has received spi- 
ritual birth. We have possessions, birthrights, 
privileges of God. Let us not, in a moment of 
darkness and trial, judge ourselves bound to forego 
them, in the thought of gaining greater. The pro- 
babilities that we are right in staying there where 
God has placed us, are infinite ; while awful is the 
responsibility which devolves upon those who seek 
a change. 

Where now on the earth shall we find unity ? It 
is a blessing from which even the Romanist, the 
greatest pretender in this kind, must feel himself 
excluded. For hardly can a thoughtful, religious 
Romanist cast his eye towards the millions of the 
Eastern Church in separation from Rome and yet 
believe them, by the decree of God, severed from the 
Church of Christ. 1 What is the fact, but that all 
Christendom is disunited, all Christendom under a 
dark cloud ? It should be our wisdom not to shut 
our eyes to this undeniable truth that God does now 
suffer disunion in the Christian family. It is a time 
of awful suspense, not of abrupt and precipitate 
change. What the Almighty is preparing to bring 
out of the womb " of this death" we may not know. 
All is dark as the tomb of Christ on the eve of His- 
crucifixion; but there is no room for despondent 
1 See Appendix. 



186 THE GRAVE OF CHRIST. 

hearts. Each man should be at his post, in his own 
proper appointed vocation, watching with Mary 
against the time the Lord shall rise, it may be, to 
re-organize His Church. 

Of this, at least, let us be warned, that as one 
institution of Divine origin, the temple of Christ's 
body, the germ of His Church, once wore the sem- 
blance of decay and death, the cold aspect of the 
repulsive tomb and the stone rolled before it ; and 
yet contained the essence, nay the Lord of all life, 
we are not with unseemly haste to despise and for- 
sake anything which, once lovely and nourishing, 
God may, in His inscrutable wisdom, have suffered 
to fall into the declinings of a lower estate. 



SERMON XL 

S. MARY MAGDALENE LEADER IN THE 
SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 



S. Matt, xxviii. 1. 
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. 

It cannot be without design that, whereas this "other 
Mary" is, in the Gospels, often mentioned in con- 
nection with Mary Magdalene, she is never spoken 
of apart from her. S. Matthew 1 tells us that among 
the many women, who beheld the Crucifixion afar 
off, was Mary Magdalene and " Mary the mother of 
James and Joses:" and twice afterwards, speaking 
of her familiarly as the " other Mary," he repeats 
the same order. " And there was Mary Magdalene 
and the other Mary sitting over against the sepul- 
chre." And still further on occurs the passage from 
which our text is taken : "In the end of the Sab- 
bath came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to 
see the sepulchre." In the same way S. Mark 
sets them together, as, at the Crucifixion ; 2 then 

1 S. Matt, xxvii. 60. a S. Mark xv. 40. 



188 S. MARY MAGDALENE [SERM. 

again, as together beholding the sepulchre ; and 
further, as going together to buy sweet spices. 1 
S. Luke slightly differs from the others, but only in 
the order of precedence. " It was Mary Magdalene," 
he says, " and Joanna and Mary the mother of 
James, and other women which told these things 
unto the Apostles.' ' He wrote as a stranger to the 
parties, and we may therefore suppose, in enume- 
rating them, preferred the rich wife of Chuza 
before the humbler mother of James and Joses ; 
whereas the other Evangelists, who had often seen 
the friends together, could not so easily separate 
them in their thoughts. In the writings then of 
these three Evangelists, we thus observe that Mag- 
dalene is always set first. We may remark, how- 
ever, that S. John, in the only place where he names 
them together, departs from this order. For, we 
must remember, that he had to introduce, in his 
enumeration, a person of far more eminent dignity. 
" Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus, His 
Mother, and His Mother's sister, Mary the wife of 
Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene." Here we see that 
Magdalene gives place to her friend, as being herself 
not so nearly related to the blessed Virgin. 

Thus we seem called upon to remark that the 
Evangelists have been directed by the Holy Ghost 
to record two singular facts ; doubtless that from 
them we might derive some important lesson for 
meditation and reflection. First by giving the pre- 
1 S. Mark xv. 47 ; xvi. 1. 



XI.] LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 189 

cedence to Mary Magdalene over the other women, 
in so marked a manner, they show that she was ac- 
counted foremost of all the women who ministered 
to Christ. They mark in her a precedence which 
would seem to have amounted, among the holy 
women who ministered to the wants of our Blessed 
Lord, to a kind of recognized leadership, — a right 
to direct their movements, if not by the actual and 
formal consent of their little body, yet by the con- 
sciousness that she possessed a certain superiority 
of mind and spirit. Take the following for an 
instance. In the morning of the Resurrection, as 
they went to the tomb they said among themselves, 
" Who shall roll away the stone from the door of 
the sepulchre?" Now, is it very likely that they 
should never have thought before this time, when 
now they were far advanced on their journey, that 
the stone must be moved from the tomb, and that 
their strength was unequal to the task ? They had 
accurately noted the stone, as it lay in the mouth of 
the tomb, before they went to buy sweet spices on 
the preceding eve : l and, before they made their pre- 
paration on the eve after the Crucifixion, they would 
certainly have canvassed the whole difficulty. This 
was not the first time, then, that they had considered 
the point. Why, then, had they not provided against 
it? And here I do not see how well we are to 
understand their conduct and their words, save by 
supposing that a peculiar influence was exercised 
1 S. Mark xvi. 1 : S. Luke xxiii. 56. 



190 S. MARY MAGDALENE [SERM. 

over them by Mary's intenser faith and greater 
energy of character. 

For her own convictions, doubtless, were strong, 
that a work of supernatural agency might be ex- 
pected which would render the spices, notwith- 
standing she suffered her companions to prepare and 
bring them to the sepulchre, altogether unnecessary. 1 
These convictions she would not fail to impart to 
her companions ; and thus their reasonings, as to the 
difficulties in the way of the stone's removal, must 
have been partly suspended. And they (although 
Mary might be unable entirely to repress objections 
which would ever and anon recur to their mind, as 
when they said, " Who shall roll away the stone ?" 
yet on the whole) were willing to allow themselves 
to be guided by the acknowledged superior discern- 
ment of one who had been admitted to very high 
favour with their Divine Lord. 

The second fact which the Holy Ghost, by the 
Evangelists, points out in this portion of Holy Scrip- 
ture is that in setting the two Maries in immediate 
connection one with another, He intends to intimate 
that they were constant companions. And we may re- 
mark further, that the term " the other Mary" helps 
to prove the existence of such a close attachment 
between the two, as the fact of their familiar inter- 
course seems to warrant us in concluding. It shows 
the simple and natural distinction of appellative, 
which the disciples commonly had adopted to dis- 
1 See Appendix. 



XI.] LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 191 

criminate between persons of the same name who 
were constantly together. There can be little doubt 
that a strong friendship subsisted between the two 
Maries. And it may not be out of place in connec- 
tion with this remark to observe of the " other Mary" 
that she is represented as never saying anything. 
No words, and hardly actions, can be said to be 
attributed to her; for, apart from Magdalene, she 
does nothing. A sign this of strong sympathies, 
and of great similarity of mind and character. And 
we may remark, in passing, that as though such a 
circumstance was not unusual in friendships, we 
have similar characteristics pourtrayed by the 
heathen poet in the friendship of his hero with the 
faithful Achates. It has been observed, that the 
most touching expression is given to the charac- 
ter of the latter, by preserving him in an entire 
silence throughout the poem. In these almost 
imperceptible traces of the friendship of the two 
Maries, we observe one of those many instances 
in which Holy Scripture appears almost as much 
to instruct by its reserve and silence, as by what 
it openly declares. If, then, from the first fact, 
we conclude that her power, of attracting others to 
follow her example, indicates in the Magdalene a 
mind of superior energy and a capacity for attach- 
ing to her hearts of various degrees of excellence ; 
the second shows that, coupled with power to lead 
the many, there existed in her also the faculty 
of attaching to her spirits moulded in a frame 



192 S. MARY MAGDALENE [SERM. 

somewhat more congenial to the tone and temper of 
her own elevated mind. 

Here, then, is a point of view in which, I think, 
we may contemplate her character to our great pro- 
fit. For in this leadership of the Magdalene, in 
the search after the departed Christ, — we see, as 
in a mirror, how the Church has been conducted, 
throughout her varied course, in her pursuit after 
the holiness which is in Him. For that Magdalene 
is a type of the Church we are taught by the Fa- 
thers generally ; l but more especially are we assured 
of it by the Venerable Bede, who so asserts it in 
commenting upon that passage in the Song of So- 
lomon, which so forcibly seems to depict, by antici- 
pation, the conduct of the women at the tomb of 
Christ, — "I will rise now, and go about the city ; 
in the streets and in the broadways I will seek Him 
Whom my soul love th." "The course attributed 
here to the bride," he says, " was to the very letter 
fulfilled in Mary Magdalene, who also typified the 
Church ; for when the Lord, Whom whilst still alive 
she loved with all her soul, was at length by death 
and burial withdrawn from her view, she sought 
Him in her bed ; that is to say, so powerfully was 
she constrained with the love of Him, that she could 
not, even when retired for repose, do anything but 
think of Him. ' She sought Him ' nightly • yes, 
throughout those two nights in which He rested in 

1 Catena Aurea ; Matt, xxviii. pp. 975, 981 ; Luke vii. p. 259 ; 
John xx. p. 603. 



XI.] LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 193 

the sepulchre. 1 But she found Him not : for as yet 
the morning of His resurrection had not dawned. 
She arose very early, and came to the sepulchre, 
bringing her sweet spices, and seeking Him with 
anxious inquiry. Yet even thus she found not 
straightway Him Whom she sought ; but first of all 
the angels — the ' watchmen ' of the Church, if 
not He Himself, found her, — of whom inquiring 
concerning her Lord, and learning that He was 
risen, she was at last favoured with a sight of Him. 
She held Him, and would not let Him go, infallibly 
assured of His victory over death. She hastened, 
also, to bring Him into her mother's house ; that 
is to say, she proclaimed His resurrection to the 
whole body of the disciples, [the Church,] who may 
well be called her mother, for they were in Christ 
before her, and induced her, by their examples, to 
adopt a life of piety." 

In this, her dauntless and untiring search after 
Christ, we behold the Church led on under the dif- 
ferent leaders, whom God has been pleased at various 
times to raise up for the diffusion of truth, and the 
manifestation of His Divine will. Are we, my 
brethren, prepared to profit by the lesson here af- 
forded us ; or has not the secular temper of mind 
that these many years has invaded even the children 
of the sanctuary, in great part disabled us from rea- 
dily following the Magdalenes whom God is pleased 
to vouchsafe us for the help and guidance of His 
1 Expos. Alleg. in Cant. Canticorum, Lib. iii. 3. 
O 



194 S. MARY MAGDALENE |_SERM, 

Church? Must it not be confessed, that, so far 
from giving up ourselves to guidance and govern- 
ment, we have been, and generally are still, only too 
solicitous in all our counsels, to confine the exercise 
of ecclesiastical power within every possible restraint 
that can be devised ? Under the pressure of exces- 
sive fears as to the liability of the Church to cor- 
ruption, and too serious apprehensions of the dispo- 
sition of the creature to detract from the glory of 
the Creator, we have too often been thrust upon 
courses calculated to frustrate wholesome discipline, 
rather than enabled to secure the good ends at 
which we aim. And how many among us there 
are who think that, in so acting, they are advancing 
the Lord's work, and the interests of true religion ; 
whereas how impressively different the course pur- 
sued by our Blessed Lord in directing His Church. 
Instead of restriction, behold every opportunity af- 
forded of freedom of action. Our Blessed Lord is 
seen in His Church to avow principles far more 
generous in their confiding spirit. He condescends 
freely to employ mere human hands, where His own 
Divine will would in any case have sufficed : and 
this without any jealous fears, lest the creature 
should trespass on the glory due to the Creator. 
He is not jealous, where some are jealous for Him. 
Entertaining no fears lest His glory should be ob- 
scured by human co-operation with Him, He does 
not refrain from elevating from time to time, here 
one individual, another there, in His Church ; but 



XI.] LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 195 

has committed to them freely, and with an entire 
confidence, the conduct of many of the greatest 
works, and of the most vast responsibilities, which 
have, in critical periods, been progressing for the 
blessing of peoples and nations. Satisfied in the 
lustre of that reflected glory of Himself, which His 
Church on earth emits before the face of men and 
angels, He envies not the favoured instrument by 
which she is, at one time and at another, made illus- 
trious. He glories, as it were, in gifting His ser- 
vants freely with gracious and splendid endowments 
of mind and spirit. He checks not their ardent 
and high-minded exertions ; for He looks upon 
them as doing His work, and as constituting, in the 
performance of it, so many irradiations of His own 
glory — so many bright earnests of that great day 
when He shall be " glorified in His saints." 1 

Such has ever been His course, as in the annals 
of the Church of God, in all ages, is most surely 
manifested. To trace this matter from the begin- 
ning. Has the Son of God, the Lord of the Church, 
manifested in His dealings with men any jealousy, 
in committing extensive rule over His people to in- 
dividuals called out from among them ? Far other- 
wise. Consider His dealings with His elder Church 
— the Jewish people and nation — and observe how 
power and confidence is ever reposed in the indi- 
vidual ; not diffused among the many. Consider 
how one single man was selected, from all the na- 
1 2Thess. i. 10. 
o2 



196 S. MARY MAGDALENE [SERM. 

tions of the world, to the distinguished privilege of 
being the founder of a new and peculiar people 
specially favoured of God above all people ; and 
was even so far honoured, as not merely to be 
called the father of the faithful, but the friend of 
God! 

Consider how, in a subsequent period, one indi- 
vidual was chosen from that same nation to work 
God's will, and bring His people from Egypt, — the 
great leader and law-giver, than whom none greater 
rose among the favoured children of Israel, until the 
Saviour's coming. Consider his great miracles, so 
great, indeed, that even the miracles wrought by 
our Lord Himself were thought by the Jews to 
admit of comparison with his. 1 Consider further the 
power and commission delegated to a Joshua, a 
Gideon, a Jephthah. And were not all these special 
instruments, who, being raised up to meet the emer- 
gencies of the several times in which they lived, 
were gifted freely with powers which, if used as 
God had designed, might become the blessing, but 
if abused, the curse, of the people over whom they 
were exercised ? 

And some instances there are brought before our 
minds, in the history of the Jewish people, in which 
is realized the twofold power to which we have al- 
luded, as observable in the Magdalene, — the gift of 
attaching no less, particular minds, than of ruling 

1 S. John vi. 30, 31. See Bp. Mann in D'Oyley and Mant ; 
also Bloomfield's Greek Test, in loc. 



XI.] LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 197 

and influencing the many. Of such a nature was 
the remarkable influence of David with his people, 
who, while he could gather to him " the hearts of 
Israel and Judah as one man," is found at the same 
time exhibiting a wonderful power in securing to 
himself the friendship of Jonathan and Mephibo- 
sheth, sons of his greatest enemy. Other like indi- 
viduals might be pointed out in Holy Writ, would 
time allow, possessing similar characteristics, and 
exercising a like universal influence on their times 
and their fellow men. Let us confine ourselves, how- 
ever, to a remarkable instance, taken from the New 
Testament. While he could cause the elders of 
Ephesus to weep at his parting, the blessed Apostle 
Paul could attach S. Luke to him by the strongest 
bonds ; thus securing to himself a devoted friend, 
and to the Church the invaluable biography of his 
labours and trials. Or, take his friendship with S. 
Barnabas, which, although once for a short time it 
received a check, was yet a durable sentiment ; for 
as to their sharp contention about Mark, it was 
doubtless the mere hasty spark struck from the 
collision of two noble natures. Their mutual es- 
teem must have survived a quarrel, the grounds of 
which were, on both sides, so honourable. But what 
I would wish you to notice in their friendship is, 
that S. Barnabas is ever content to follow the supe- 
rior mental and spiritual direction of S. Paul — to 
co-operate with him, in short, until crossed in his 
friendship for Mark. For instance, it is plain that 



198 S. MARY MAGDALENE [SERM. 

the apostolic writer makes S. Paul the prominent 
character, inasmuch as he represents him invariably 
as the chief speaker. In what more could an Apostle 
rejoice, than in the happy gift of a persuasive elo- 
quence ? S. Barnabas saw S. Paul preferred to him, 
when the people were about to offer sacrifices to 
him as the god of eloquence, But this blessed 
Apostle, like the " other Mary," is content in si- 
lence to follow. With that venerable dignity and 
quiet repose of manner which made the people take 
him for Jupiter, he continues his unruffled course ; 
and envies not the great Apostle of the Gentiles, in 
the more distinguished career which Providence had 
marked out for him. 

Finally, we may not omit to observe the like 
marks of greatness and power in our ever Blessed 
Saviour and most Perfect Exemplar. He attaches 
to Him many disciples ; but admits, out of those 
highly-favoured, one only to His bosom friendship, 
three only to His most secret counsels: by this 
showing plainly that a difference of men consti- 
tutes distinctions in society ; and that one is pre- 
ferred to another, as being likely to be of higher 
use and influence in the Church of God. 

And so it has been ever since. In this respect, 
the Church differs not from any mere human insti- 
tution. Secular and ecclesiastical history have each 
its great men, — each its leading characters : only 
for hero, benefactor, inventor, in the one, we must 
honour martyr, saint, and doctor in the other* 



XI.] LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 199 

How numerous and how glorious are that band of 
holy men, whom the Church's wondrous story un- 
folds to the gaze of her reverent sons. How many 
glorious names might one mention, the very sound 
of which creates in the initiated hearer the most sub- 
lime inspirations : a succession of men of the most 
excellent virtues, and the most entire influence over 
the destinies of mankind, who living from the time 
of Christ, their Great Master, have exhibited a 
faithful reflection of His holy and perfect ensample 
as closely as the frailty of poor human nature would 
admit of. Such, let us say, were Cyprian, Athana- 
sius and Augustine, of a former age : such, let us 
say, were Hooker, Andre wes and Wilson, of a later. 
These all have had their office appointed them of 
God ; these all have enjoyed, in addition to the 
most exalted piety, the most mighty supremacy of 
human endowments, — whether gifts of influence, or 
gifts of intellect, — committed to them for the most 
blessed ends. 

The whole of ecclesiastical history, whether 
Jewish or Christian, speaks to us with one voice as 
to the question of the ruler and the ruled. It is 
full of instances where some holy men have been 
called, in the spirit of Mary Magdalene, to take 
the lead in the battle field of Christ ; where others, 
like the " other Mary," have been appointed by 
Divine Providence, discerning each man's several 
fitness, to follow in faithfulness and quiet confi- 
dence the direction of those leaders, whom the wis- 



200 S. MARY MAGDALENE [SERM. 

dom of God has manifestly called to positions of 
influence and guidance. 

What is our lesson, hence derived ? It is this : 
As there must be leaders, so there must be others 
who stand in the relation of those who are led ; as 
nothing can succeed without good generalship, so 
nothing prospers, unless those appointed to be led 
recognize the duty of subordination, and are willing 
each to take his own appointed place, however hum- 
ble. Let us confess that, if we would have more 
success in our encounters with the great enemy of 
Christ and His Church, — if we really wish to de- 
feat his well-laid snares against our souls, this im- 
portant relationship, between the ruler and the 
ruled, must be allowed to form a much more serious 
subject for reflection, than it has of late years taken 
up in our minds. It must occupy a principal place 
in our prayers, and must come into more active and 
influential operation in the conduct of all the affairs 
of the Christian body. Alas ! are we not now un- 
happily but too much inclined, every one of us, 
whatever our defects, whether of talent or position, 
or opportunity, to struggle for the vain honour of 
that leadership, which is only appointed, in God's 
providence, to a highly distinguished but highly re- 
sponsible few ? Few are there willing to " occupy 
the room of the unlearned." As it was heretofore 
so now : " Every one hath a Psalm, hath a doctrine, 
hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpre- 
tation." 



XI.] LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 201 

And it is this spirit in us which provokes us to 
that further evil at which I have already hinted. 
The spirit of independence — of self-guidance, leads 
us to be jealous of elevating (as we should express 
it) the mortal, or of allowing power in the things of 
religion to fall into the hands of the few. Our 
minds are peculiarly sensitive on this subject. We 
magnify the danger of large power committed for 
religious ends to the few. Our notion of the liability 
of all power to abuse is allowed, with fatal frequency 
— with a constantly recurring intensiveness, to beset 
us, and to restrain us in the free expression of more 
generous sentiments. Instead of submitting to this 
evil as a fact in the providential decrees of God — 
instead of receiving it as the necessary condition on 
which all benefits derivable through the exercise of 
power are to be obtained — we endeavour to check 
its workings as an evil, by unnaturally damming up 
the sources out of which alone can flow good. We 
are obliged to put some trust in men ; but we are 
resolved it shall be as little as may be. We have too 
little confidence in the integrity or capacity of hu- 
man nature, to believe in the entire goodness or suf- 
ficient capability of any one. We would, therefore, 
rather see all power intrusted to the many, and ra- 
mified into innumerable divisions and sub -divisions, 
than rely upon the penetrating wisdom of the few 
whom God hath by genius, or by elevation of men- 
tal or spiritual endowments, endued with the spirit 
of counsel. 



202 S. MARY MAGDALENE [SERM. 

This unconfiding spirit is our pride — the boast of 
modern enlightenment ; but instead of concentrating 
and giving force and efficacy to power, in the 
healthy discharge of its functions, we have every 
reason to fear that it only tends to cripple those 
efforts which rulers are now making for the welfare 
of God's people. For what is more plain, from the 
examples alleged, than that the very contrary prin- 
ciple to that which we now adopt is the principle 
favoured by Almighty God. And no thoughtful 
and instructed mind is there but must have observed, 
as one result of the Divine principle we have been 
advocating, the increased facility with which all the 
wheels of a system are set in motion, when one 
mind is allowed to be the actuating and informing 
power : and how it encourages invariably the putting 
in practice of a much higher and nobler range of 
ethical and religious philosophy. On the other 
hand, when the minds of the many are consulted — 
even when something like an unity of opinion is the 
result, the very diversity, which of necessity springs 
out of counsels drawn from so many conflicting in- 
terests and passions, occasions that resolutions 
should be so formed as to secure rather the absence 
of what is injurious to all than the retention of what 
is good for all. 

It is freely confessed that large power so intrusted 
may be abused. It may — it will be so ; but this is 
an evil against which no ingenuity of man, in im- 
posing restriction on the exercise of power, will 



XI.] LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 203 

effectually guard you ; for so natural is the depen- 
dence of the weak upon the strong, and of the sim- 
ple upon the acute-minded, that the principle of 
committing power to a select few, must be allowed 
to have free scope, since it is sure to find somehow 
or other its vent. It will indulge in the adoption 
of licentious and eccentric leaders, if it is denied its 
necessary and regular expansion in those who are 
ordained to eminence and authority by the course 
of Divine Providence, or by lofty endowments. We 
are, and must be led ; nay, we are carried away, but 
unhappily not of purpose, and as willing to be led of 
God. For while we think full oft that we are lead- 
ing, we are indeed led. Wanting the power for 
great things, we of necessity succumb to the supe- 
rior force of another. In some shape, then, there 
must be submission — a bowing down to authority. 
Men must and will influence one another, and the 
more powerful mind must rule the weaker. But far 
better is it to fall into the hands of God than into 
the hands of man: to submit to God's ordinances, 
to watch His appointments, to follow His holy ones, 
than to betake ourselves to rulers and masters of our 
own choosing. 

Would that we were willing to obey even there 
where God has ordained we should ! Perhaps our 
heart's dearest desire is delayed, because the spirit of 
insubordination rests still among us. Where is that 
"other Mary" in our ranks, who can be content as 
she was to take her place by the side of her ardent 



204 THE LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR CHRIST. 

friend— do as she did — think as she thought — and 
say nothing ? Where, indeed ? Where, too, among 
the many shall we trace the characteristic virtues of 
Magdalene's little band of followers — faith, con- 
stancy, union, submission ? In these times, what 
could be more heartily desired in our Zion than the 
sound of some chieftain's trumpet calling, with no 
uncertain sound, the Lord's children to do battle 
against her enemies ? And it may be, this is denied 
us, only because the spirit of obedience is not with 
us ; and because that communion of feeling and that 
self-abandonment are wanting in our hosts, which 
would enable the Lord's champion successfully to 
do battle against the ranks of the great fomenter of 
all our troubles — our adversary Satan. 

Finally, brethren, let it be our prayer, in these 
times of our necessity, that God would raise up some 
holy guide, whether layman or ecclesiastic, as fitted 
to cope with the evils of these times, and able to dis- 
cern the needful remedies to be applied to them, as 
S. Mary Magdalene and S. Paul were suited to theirs 
— that the foundation of his great gifts may be 
based in a deep humility— that as S. Paul he may, 
eschewing his own wisdom, first have learned to sit 
at the feet of the great Gamaliels of the Church, 
and from the fountain of their doctrine prove that 
he also, with S. Mary Magdalene, has sat, a devoted 
listener, at that source of all inspired truth — the 
feet of the Doctor of all doctors, even Christ Jesus. 



SERMON XII. 

ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 



S. Mark xvi. 2. 

And very early in the morning, the first day of 
the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the 
rising of the sun. 

There is surely no more edifying example in Scrip- 
ture, our Lord Himself excepted, than that afforded 
by Mary Magdalene and the little band of women 
under her conduct, in their devotion to the entombed 
Christ. That was no ordinary virtue by which 
they believed that Christ would rise again. But to 
act upon that belief, and to show so much zeal, such 
untiring perseverance, — the tokens of so great a 
love, — this was indeed virtue. Even S. John, when 
he believed that the Lord had risen, took no steps 
as the result of his belief. While specially saying 
of himself that, on looking into the sepulchre, he 
believed, (and this can mean nothing less than that 
he believed that the Lord had risen,) we hear of no 
consequent search for Him. Both Peter, who did 
not believe, and John who did, in this respect are 



206 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

in a common case. Both go away ; and thus both 
are outstripped in the race of holiness by Magdalene, 
— to whom they seem to concede in this instance 
the grace of an active realizing faith. 

Mary, and her little band of holy women, had 
seen Christ placed in the sepulchre two nights be- 
fore this morning that they had risen so early to 
come to the tomb. As soon as they might, — that 
is, directly the Sabbath had passed, on the eve of 
the first day of the week, — the same time, indeed, as 
our Saturday evening, they commenced their prepa- 
rations for the due embalming of Christ. Then, 
and not till then, did they commence operations ; 
thus scrupulously observing the, at that time, unre- 
scinded law, — to keep holy the Sabbath day. First 
Mary Magdalene and two others, go to buy oint- 
ments. They knew that Joseph and Nicodemus 
had just before the eve of the Sabbath (i.e. our 
Good Friday evening, and immediately after the 
Crucifixion,) " brought a mixture of myrrh and 
aloes, about an hundred pounds weight, and wound 
the body of Jesus in linen clothes, with the 
spices." But this service of respect and devotion 
was not enough to satisfy their great affection. The 
pious work of Joseph and Nicodemus was done in 
haste ; the ointments collected, it may be, from old 
stores 1 — the first which in such a strait could be 
procured. But these holy women felt that they 
must needs buy odours, and spare no cost. Again, 

1 Andrewes, Vol. II. 226. 



XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 207 

the strong desire of manifesting itself, is evident in 
a true affection ; or rather, it cannot well exist, and 
not exhibit outwardly its preferences. It was, there- 
fore, little to them what Joseph had done : it was as 
though that labour of love had been left undone, in 
the performance of which they could claim no share, 
Again, we observe that the very earliest moment is 
chosen for their visit to the sepulchre. " Early," 
says S. John, " when it was yet dark." Again, 
they are deterred by no difficulties : a huge stone 
must be rolled away ; but that occasions no altera- 
tion of their purpose. Such a love and zeal as 
this must needs meet with its abundant reward ; and 
though as yet they find not Christ, yet His mes- 
senger, an Angel, comes and tells them of Him. 

They come to the sepulchre, just after the dread- 
ful vision was seen by the guards of that Angel who 
after a great earthquake " descended from heaven 
and came and rolled back the stone from the door 
and sat upon it." Now, whether it were this same 
Angel we know not, but some one from among the 
glorious hosts of heaven invites them to " see the 
place where the Lord lay." They enter the tomb, 
and there see a vision of another Angel — " a young 
man clothed in a long white garment," — who 
communicates to them the fact of the Lord's 
Resurrection ; and thereupon they " go out quickly, 
and flee from the sepulchre," influenced by feelings 
of mingled fear and joy. They tremble — are 
amazed, and are restrained from going to tell what 
they have seen to any man : " for they were afraid," 



208 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

says the Evangelist. It would now appear that still 
hanging about the sepulchre, — meditating, with 
wonder at what had occurred, and considering with 
themselves what next they were to expect should 
come to pass, they see within the tomb another 
vision of Angels, who reason with them of the truth 
of what they had already heard. And now, per- 
suaded by them, they no longer hesitate, but go 
and tell the disciples. 

And here the sacred narrative informs us no 
longer of the movements of the holy women as a 
body, but becomes wholly occupied with pourtray- 
ing the naming zeal exhibited in the Magdalene. 
For when the whole body of the Apostles refuse to 
believe what the women relate, we find that so far 
from allowing a sense of discomfiture to operate 
upon her feelings, and to paralyse her actions ; she 
forcibly and with undiminished faith and hope pur- 
sues her representations to S. Peter and S. John, — 
and that with such good success, that they give heed 
to her, so far at least as to go and see the tomb. 
fi She runneth and cometh to Simon Peter and to 
John, and saith, They have taken away the Lord 
out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they 
have laid Him." And further we may remark, that 
when, in company with them, she returned to the 
grave, she could not satisfy herself, as they did, 
with once looking and then going away. She stood 
without at the sepulchre weeping. " Their going 
away," says Bishop Andrewes, 1 " commends her 
1 Bp. Andrewes, Lib. Ang. Cath. Theol. Vol. III. p. 7- 



XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 209 

staying behind ;— a stronger affection fixed her, so 
fixed her 1 that she had not the power to remove 
thence. Go who would, she would not. To stay 
while others do, that is the world's love : but Peter 
is gone, and John too ; — when all are gone, then to 
stay is love, and constant love." 

She stayed ; and under the influence of the com- 
plex feelings which struggled within her breast, she 
gave way to weeping. She was impatient to see 
Him Whom her soul longed after. Galilee, where 
the Angels said He would be found, was far away. 
Many days must pass before she could travel so far 
to see Him there. He was alive — was somewhere. 
Why was that somewhere hidden from her, that 
she could not be allowed to see Him even now ? 
Under feelings of this kind shall we wonder if she 
continued to seek Him still ? She wept, and with 
such effusion of tears, the Angels cannot but notice 
it and seek the cause. When Christ once wept 
the Jews said, " See how He loved him." It was 
this woman's brother for whom He wept. May we 
not say of the sister as now she wept — " See how 
she loved Him?" 2 

But why this perseverance in looking into the 
sepulchre? Surely it is excessive, and passes all 
moderate bounds. The two foremost disciples of 
her Lord had looked there before, and had satisfied 
themselves that He was not there. It matters not ; 

1 " Fortior earn figebat affectus." — Aug. Tract, in Joan. 121, init. 

2 Bp. Andrewes, v. iii. 7. Lib. Ang. Cath. Theol. 

P 



210 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

she will not trust the sight of either. But she had 
even herself looked in too before this. Nay, she 
will not trust her own eyes ; if the mere evidence of 
her eyes is to make her give up her search. Some- 
where near He was, she felt sure ; and of this, at 
least, she was confident, that to her love He could 
not long deny Himself. But this it was (that He 
had so long denied Himself already,) that set her 
on weeping ; it was agony to her to think that He 
was risen, and yet she knew not where to find Him. 

In this state of mind it is, that, looking into the 
Sepulchre, she sees two Angels. Strange, when be- 
fore she saw, at three several times, visions of 
Angels, although accompanied by her friends, she 
was full of fear ; but now, when those two stand be- 
fore her, and she is all alone, she is nothing moved. 
The sight of them is sudden, — it startles her not ; 
the vision glorious, — she is in no wise affected. 
Wrapt in a kind of ecstacy, even their words of 
compassion, — "Woman, why weepest thou?" — 
make no impression. She ceases not from weeping. 
An Angel, — two, — yea, any number of them, could 
not content her when her Lord was what she sought. 
" No man in earth, no Angel in heaven can comfort 
her; none but He That is taken away, — Christ, 
— and none but Christ; and till she find Him 
again, she refuseth all manner of comfort : yea, even 
from heaven, — even from the Angels themselves." 1 

At length the Lord Merciful and Gracious, in 
1 Bishop Andrewes, Vol. III. p. 13. 



XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 211 

answer to devotion so deep, perseverance so con- 
stant, comes to her ; but still He conceals Himself 
in part : for either He comes of purpose so, or it is 
the mist in her still bedimmed eyes deceives her : to 
her He looks like the gardener. " Ponder well," 
says S. Bernard, " how, with the most vehement 
passion of love, this blessed woman loved Christ 
her King : — ' Sir, if thou hast born Him hence, tell 
me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him 
away. 5 What 'Him,' Mary? for thou hast named 
no one to whom thou makest reference ! Dost thou 
think that so, in all hearts, is the memory of thy 
Beloved enshrined, as it is in the secret chambers of 
thine own? ' And I,' she says, 'will take Him 
away.' A wonder ! What, a man of mature years 
and perfect stature, for the embalming of whose 
body a hundred pounds weight of spices hardly suf- 
ficed, wilt thou, one of the tenderest among women, 
carry and bear off? O, ardent and loving speech, 
which flowing from a love full of sincerity, pro- 
mises what it cannot fulfil ; for nothing seems to be 
difficult to one who loves I" 1 

And now, after the display of a faith so ardent, a 
devotion so deep, came the reward of all her con- 
stancy. Jesus said to her, "Mary!" When He 
found that, as the gardener, nothing will prevail 
with her, and that still the burden of her words is 
" He is taken away ;" that Himself, and no other, 

1 S. Bernardi Sermo in Fest. B. M. Magd. ad fin. pp. 246, 247; 
Paris, 1632. 

P2 



212 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

(not even a messenger, — not even Himself in dis- 
guise will suit her, but that only Himself) is indeed 
the object of her search, He refrains no longer, but 
rewarding her unflinching zeal and faithful adher- 
ence, openly reveals Himself. 

He makes Himself known by His voice ; for 
that, too, was disguised. In His wonted accent 
He pronounces her name, " Mary !' ? No more— - 
enough — she knows and recognises Him imme- 
diately, as one who has been expecting a desired ob- 
ject, and perceives it at the first instant of its ap- 
proach; and forth from her lips springs the joyful 
salutation, " Rabboni !" 

My brethren, in this portraiture, displaying to 
your view, and upholding for your example, the zeal 
of the Magdalene, we have a subject, in the highest 
degree fruitful in matter for our serious contem- 
plation. There is no duty more necessary to com- 
plete the circle of virtues belonging to the perfection 
of the Christian character, than zeal ; and yet, it is 
painful to have it to say, there is no grace less prac- 
tised, and, indeed, less understood, among the dis- 
ciples of Christ. Christian zeal consists in a high- 
minded spirit of self-sacrifice towards God and His 
Only Son. It aims, apart from all consideration of 
self, at securing the glory, and asserting the honour 
of Him Whose sacred cause evokes its manifesta- 
tion. It is not satisfied with small testimonies of 
devotion, but calls up the whole ardour of his na- 
ture whom it inflames. When God's honour is con- 



XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 213 

cerned, it makes him forward to do all that may 
contribute towards exhibiting it before the eyes of 
men, either by sacrifices which help to swell the 
common tribute of honour and glory redounding to 
His praise from the whole universe, or by showing 
resentment, and a deep sense of wrong, when in- 
dignities are offered Him, or neglects suffered to 
pass upon Him. It is a feeling which so occupies 
and subdues him whom it animates, as not to allow 
him rest when even rest might be allowable. Such an 
one seeks not — nay he sees not — excuses for inac- 
tion ; but wherever there is exertion made for the 
advancement of the Kingdom of God, he desires to 
take his part, and co-operate therein. Although 
others have done enough, yet it is not enough, if he 
may not be allowed to bear a part, and to do all that 
may be done, according to his proportion, and the 
measure of his ability, Nay, a mind inflamed w T ith 
this spirit, is ingenious in finding a vent for the fires 
which consume it ; and if the way is closed up against 
their progress, it will yet take a course of its own, 
and seek, not to say make, a channel for their out- 
break and manifestation. 

But zeal is a characteristic, it must be confessed, 
not frequently discernible in the great body of Chris- 
tians. Indeed, it is much to be questioned, whether 
such features as we have described would, by many 
persons, be considered at all essential, even in a lower 
degree, to the due development of Christian charac- 
ter. For so far from encouraging fervour, the mo- 



214 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

dern idea of Christian excellence prides itself on its 
reasonableness ; and on its agreement with what we 
consider good sense, as distinct from any tendencies in 
the line of excess. Modern notions, it is to be feared, 
will not admit of the existence of any such elements, 
as we have mentioned, as being qualities even be- 
longing to, much less inherent in, the normal type of 
the Christian character. Zeal, with men of modern 
views, is contended to be a virtue of Jewish origin, 
leading us to severe acts of vengeance, and high and 
bloody deeds of enthusiasm — the results of the stern 
training and discipline of the legal ordinances and 
precepts of the Mosaic dispensation. This severe, 
enthusiastic, undeviating line of service is, agreeably 
to their theory, to give way to the more accommo- 
dating, mild and gracious spirit of the Gospel. But 
then, we ask, is this spirit of stern and high-minded 
devotion to have no corresponding reflection in the 
Gospel ? How, then, could the law, we would fain 
ask, be as " a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ ?" 
This severe spirit of legal zeal has then, my breth- 
ren, its answering reflection in the Gospel ; and the 
features in Magdalene's character now set forth be- 
fore you, you have already discerned as the adequate 
representation and faithful witness of that Christian 
zeal which was to supplant in its more refined linea- 
ments, and more graceful adaptation to the wants 
of men in general, the unmingled severity of the 
legal standard as exhibited in the noble deeds of a 
Moses, a Phinehas, and a Jael. 



XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 215 

We have, in the character of Magdalene's liberality, 
proof and example to the uttermost of Christian zeal — 
zeal for which she was commended — zeal for which 
she was rewarded. And here we insist not so much on 
the cost of her funereal preparations, as upon the fact, 
that now, if at any time, she might have held herself 
excused from making any further offerings at the 
shrine of her Lord's Person. For, ointment for the 
burial had been already, to her knowledge, bestowed 
upon Him. As Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus 
had wrapped His body in spices, a whole hundred 
weight of them, what need of further attention ? 
Observe then this mark of Christian zeal in her, and 
let us hasten to imitate her. 

What though our ancestors, the Josephs of Ari- 
mathea, pious men of old, have anointed Christ's 
body, — built Him noble earthly habitations, where 
He may meet those whom He is keeping under dis- 
cipline against the day when He shall judge them 
fitting for His Presence in the heavenly dwellings : 
what though they built for Him new temples, after 
the spirit of Arimathean Joseph's gift of the new 
tomb : what though refusing the old idol temples, 
they built Him magnificent monuments wherein 
man, or idol of man's invention, had never lain ; 
shall we of this generation be slack to do Him ho- 
nour only on the poor pretext that so much has 
been done already by a former age to honour Him ? 
Nay, rather let the holy zeal of pious men of yore 
warm our hearts with the sacred flame of devotion. 



216 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

and cause us to emulate them in their spirit of love 
and sacrifice. Far from us be the thought that the 
day for the erection on earth of the greater and 
nobler palaces of our God, those noble inspirations 
wherein the genius of Christianity seems to have 
taken an outward and visible impress, - are passed 
away. So long as the exhibition of a fervid zeal 
for God's honour and glory shall be characteristic 
of a Christian, so long will it be the imperative duty 
of those who have influence and power, to call upon 
the people wherever new Sees are founded, whether 
at home or abroad in the colonies, to bring offerings 
to the treasury for the building Him suitable habita- 
tions as outward manifestations of their deep sense 
of the inward reverence that is due to Him Who is 
Lord of Lords and King of Kings, — the poor stretch 
of mortal efforts to compass in visible forms the ho- 
nour of One of Whom no earthly temple is worthy 
— Whom not even the Heaven of Heavens can 
contain. 

But the zeal of the Magdalene passes this point 
by yet another stage ; for not only had others given 
ointment towards Christ's burial, but she herself 
had also already most freely anointed Him, — so freely 
indeed as to receive in return for the spirit of muni- 
ficence she had displayed, her reward in a prophetic 
testimony to the lasting endurance of her praises 
from the gracious lips of her Lord. And what are 

1 It was finely observed by the philosopher Coleridge " that a 
Cathedral was a kind of petrifaction of Christianity." 






XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 217 

we taught in this ? That we must never so rest con- 
tent with our own deeds, as to look back upon them 
with an eye of self-complacency. Never should we 
compare ourselves with ourselves, but ever must we 
be stretching forward and aiming at a higher mark 
than before. Never let us make our own stature 
the measure of our growth ; but, going on in growth, 
let us strive after perfection until we come to the 
" measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 
Let us never stop short content with any good we 
have already achieved ; bat ever aim at attaining, 
however much we are taught that we are ever com- 
ing short of, the excellence that is in Christ Jesus. 
Let not, therefore, Christians of this age boast of 
its progress, and tire in the good work it is, with so 
much praiseworthy piety, promoting. Let it be con- 
fessed that, after all that has been done, the greater 
part of that vast labour which devolves upon us, in 
making the means of Gospel teaching co-extensive 
with the wants of the people, remains undone. We 
have only awakened to a true sense of our responsi- 
bilities. We have only just learnt to acknowledge 
our deficiencies and shortcomings in many of the 
most important duties which become a Christian 
community. Even with too much reluctance do we 
consent to realize the principle and act upon it 
fully, that we have to aim high even to reach a 
moderate mark. But let us remember above and 
beyond all this stringent necessity which should 
stimulate our exertions, that our Lord never ex- 



218 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

pects us to rest ; but will ever point out to us, even 
when we shall have outstripped all other Christian 
men and nations in deeds of beneficence and works 
of piety, still further occasions on which we may 
anoint Him. Let us not then indulge (individuals 
especially) in feelings of self-gratulation, as though 
we could ever do enough for our Blessed Lord and 
Master Christ, while He still is pleased to prolong 
His stay among us, and to vouchsafe His Presence, 
as it were in the vast sepulchre of this earth. 

But Mary might have excused herself on another 
(and perhaps what to her mind might have proved 
a more seductive) ground. She might have thought, 
"Why should I go to cost, and use pains upon my 
Lord's body as one dead, Whom yet I believe to be 
about to rise again before my preparations can be 
of service to Him so as to promote His honour ?" 
All her pains, in fact, and present cost she might 
well think would fall short of the positive ends for 
which they were designed. But from even this 
evil snare and suggestion of the enemy she escaped. 
Her love was too natural and uncalculating to realize 
such an objection. 

And here, my brethren, we shall do well in tak- 
ing her (as we have already done in so many other 
points) as an example. For I suppose there is no 
one reflection which causes us to hesitate in the 
performance of acts of piety, more than ideas of a 
similar kind to that which we have just represented 
Mary as rising superior to. It is a painful subject 






XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 219 

of reflection how much of that ointment, which from 
time to time has been bestowed on Christ's body, 
has been consumed in quarters to which its bestowers 
never designed it should be devoted. And, even 
passing by the greater losses which Christ has suf- 
fered in the way of ointment, we cannot but reflect 
with infinite pain, how often it is miserably frittered 
away to support lamentably insufficient, in the place 
of well instructed and godly ministers of Christ's 
Gospel; how often in place of orthodox and evange- 
lical doctrine we have an effete teaching, and a lan- 
guid morality affecting orthodoxy, or a grievous 
mockery of empty and ignorant enthusiasm substi- 
tuted for the sublime truths of the everlasting Gos- 
pel. But though such things are, yet let them not 
prove scandals to us ; as God is pleased to suffer 
them, so let us be patient to endure them. Let the 
wicked in their hate, and the ignorant enthusiast in 
his mad zeal combine to destroy the marks of our 
good works, as heretofore they have done ; and let 
the weak by their inconsistency and folly, and the 
timid by their irresolution and faltering support, 
combine to mar their efficiency in ever so great a 
degree ; yet let us undaunted still go on. Destruc- 
tion may do its fell work here and there ; and the 
Church Militant here on earth, must have her 
groanings whilst labouring under the burden of 
an earthly connection, and experience her reverses 
as well as her triumphs ; still the marks of a 
visible Church shall ever be amongst us. To the 



220 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

end of time there will be gigantic monuments of the 
imperishable character of the Gospel. For the trial 
of the faithful the wicked are allowed their day ; 
but it is not in their power to obliterate the mark of 
all good deeds and holiness from off the earth. We 
shall not fail of a recompense, however our hope 
may be disappointed, or our Christian liberality 
abused. We cast our bread upon the waters ; we 
shall surely find it after many days. Let us then 
learn to be liberal, even when some doubts may be 
entertained of the immediate good application of 
our gift. If it do not avail the present, it may 
benefit a future generation. And, if we have acted 
with only a moderate share of wisdom in our alms- 
giving, we shall not surely be suffered by a Righteous 
God Who does " not forget the work and labour that 
proceedeth of love," to fail of our reward ; but our 
ointment, with free and uncalculating spirit poured 
out, shall carry us on to the sight of angels and to 
the full vision and presence of Christ. 

Again, my brethren, Magdalene's promptitude in 
following up holy purposes by holy actions cannot 
be sufficiently commended to your notice. We mark 
it in that she was latest at the tomb on the eve after 
the Lord's Crucifixion, and earliest at it on the 
morn of His resurrection. Her example here should 
stimulate us, not to do the Lord's work with slack- 
ness, but to cast aside all lethargy in the things of 
religion. Let us persuade ourselves to rise up early, 
and in faith of a reward which we see not, pursue it 



XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 221 

with all the avidity of one who sees. And here we 
have an opportunity of contemplating for our in- 
struction the nature of a well- tempered zeal, a zeal 
governed at once by piety and discretion. For her 
good deed was so effected as neither to violate, on the 
one hand, the laws of piety, nor, on the other, to bring 
contempt or suspicion upon the doctrine of her 
Great Master. Too well she knew would her Lord's 
enemies have rejoiced to find, as often before they 
had endeavoured to spy out, an occasion against 
Him and His followers as Sabbath-breakers ; but by 
waiting till the Sabbath was more than past, before 
she began her labour of love, she at once showed 
her wisdom and discretion. While she exhibited 
reverence for the law of keeping holy the seventh 
day of the week, let us learn from her on the one 
hand, that while we with all zeal devote ourselves to 
pious labours, and the active duties of a religious 
life, yet that we must not fail in that degree of reli- 
gious fear which will induce us to secure to ourselves 
times of devotion, of retirement, of meditation; 
since the most religious actions need the consecra- 
tion of prayer to sanctify and preserve them from 
the corrupting effects of earthly influences. And, 
on the other hand, let us learn from her not to suffer 
our religious zeal so to overflow as to induce us to 
overlook, in the magnitude and importance of the 
ends we are pursuing, the use of faulty and unscru- 
pulous, and irreligious means. And even when both 
ends and the means we employ to attain them are 



222 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

right, we are yet called upon to be patient in our 
application of them ; lest by a zeal, too unchastened 
by thoughts of our alliance with the Christian mem- 
bership and our brethren's slower conception of and 
value for high privileges, we hurry them, by our too 
premature advocacy of measures for which they are 
not prepared, into opposition and misconception 
of them, where, under a more patient treatment, 
they would have afforded aid and encouragement to 
us in their promotion. 

But to proceed with our task of deriving in- 
struction from the example of this saintly woman 
whom neither difficulty, discouragement nor disap- 
pointment, deters from her pursuit of the blessings of 
the Gospel, as she saw them concentrated in the Di- 
vine Person of Him from Whom, as from their pri- 
mal source, they were then first flowing, to the future 
gladdening of earth's children and heaven's sons. To 
the ardour of her faith what shall form an obstacle ? 
Already did she comprehend that saying of her 
Lord, " Say to this mountain, Be thou removed and 
cast into the sea, and it shall obey you." Roman 
guards, great stones, the jaws of death, the weight of 
spice-laden corpses, — they are nothing to that strong 
and vehement belief which possesses her. Oh, my 
brethren, here is a model for us. Would that we 
were so ardent in our belief of Christ's hidden pre- 
sence among us, as in our enthusiasm to glow in the 
pursuit of all and any the faintest traces of Him. 
But, alas ! that holy fervour which true religion ge- 



XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 223 

nerates, which love and faith combine so largely to 
foster, this is unhappily too much a stranger to our 
feelings. We easily succumb under difficulties ; a 
slight scandal offends us ; not merely large stones 
must be rolled out of our way, but every petty ob- 
struction, that may occasion us trouble, must be 
removed. We but too often are found not to per- 
severe in our search after Christ. We surmount 
some few difficulties, and then grow wearied and 
slacken our pace. We will not patiently endure, 
that we may obtain that blessed promise of Christ, 
" Again a little while and ye shall see Me." This is 
our imperfect way of following after Christ. And 
what is our hindrance ? Where is the cause of our 
failure ? What we want is to beg of a Gracious God 
such a heart as that, while confessing our own weak- 
ness, yet, with a gracious confidence in His help, we 
should dare to undertake things beyond our own 
strength, so that any dead body, laden with its hun- 
dred weight of spices, might seem as nothing to us. 
Then we might chance too, oft to surprise ourselves 
talking of our sacred subjects of search, as Mary 
Magdalene did of Christ, with the same happy for- 
getfulness of love as if all the world must needs be 
interested in that which interests us. The dull inert 
mass of society needs characters of this kind, who 
shall as it were breathe upon it and inspire it with a 
life it cannot catch from the beatings of its own 
tame pulse. 

Blessed intimations of His near approach to us, 



224 ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. [SERM. 

our Lord Christ casts on all sides of us ; and if we 
would take up w T ith the temper of Magdalene we 
should pierce the mist that keeps Him from us, and 
more often enjoy the blissful consciousness of His 
Presence. That temper is described in the Canticles, 
" I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, 
and in the broadways I will seek Him Whom my 
soul loveth: I sought Him, but I found Him not. 
The watchmen that go about the city found me : to 
whom I said, Saw ye Him Whom my soul loveth ?" 
It is an ardent zealous temper ; but still it is a gentle 
one too ; and waiteth the Lord's time. " I charge 
you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and 
by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor 
awake my love, till He please." 1 

Did we, my brethren, but persevere in this spirit, — 
these blessings, that is, the sight of angels, of Christ 
in shadow, of Christ in the brightness of noon-day 
glory, would be secured to us. We should be led 
from the Word preached to the Word fed on, and 
from the Word fed on to the Word one with us, and 
we with Him. 

And thus with perseverance we come to the aim 
of all search — the end of all zeal. And what 
is the end ? The discovery of that which is our 
whole life's search, — the finding of Christ, Our 
End is as our Beginning, — the " Alpha and Omega." 
Let us not content ourselves with angels, the mere 

1 Song of Solomon, iii. 2, 3, 5. 



XII.] ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 225 

messengers of Christ, although beautiful are the 
feet of those that bring good tidings and publish 
peace. These are not our end. Let us beware lest 
ever we come to forget the End in the means ; the 
Word in the preacher of the Word — the Master in 
the disciple — Christ in some Apollos. Such, we 
fear, is the blind and fatal course which some taking, 
make wreck of their dearest hopes. Nay, there is 
at this time an all-pervading spirit abroad ; and men, 
ever willing to follow shadows of spirituality rather 
than the real substances of holiness, are forsaking 
the walks of true religion, even while they feign 
most to admire the beauty it presents. Yea, I 
beseech you, brethren, let no means of grace 
whatsoever, divert your attention from the Lord. 
There are some who perhaps rely too much on 
holy books ; and allow them to obscure their sight 
of Christ. To such I say, Rest not in the great 
consolation of holy books. Good as they are, there 
is no abiding-place here. Yea, though you should 
have princes in this kind. And there are some who 
(like the Pharisees of old) even make their know- 
ledge of the letter of the Bible, a means whereby they 
separate themselves from Christ. 

Let us, however, abuse none of these gracious 
gifts ; but use all to the furtherance of the great end 
for which they were bestowed upon us, as means to 
help us in the devout search for Christ Jesus ; 
that so after all our labours of love we may at length, 
with Magdalene, be brought more and more to the 

Q 



226 



ZEAL IN SEEKING CHRIST. 



perfect vision of Him, which is more and more to 
think with Him, to feel with Him, to take counsel 
with Him, to act with Him, to be one with Him, as 
He is One with us and with the Father. 



SERMON XIII. 

NEARNESS TO CHRIST A CALL FOR 
REVERENCE. 



S. John xx. 17. 
Jesus said unto her, " Touch Me not." 

We have thus far traced the labours of S. Mary 
Magdalene, in her search after her buried Lord, to 
that point where, joyful in her recognition of Him in 
the supposed gardener, she met Htm with the saluta- 
tion " Rabboni." Now we have to observe that, even 
at this stage of her history, her joy was but of mo- 
mentary duration. Something occurred that threw 
a damp over those tumultuous feelings of exultation 
to which she had but just given expression. Those 
few words, " Touch Me not," and that majestic as- 
pect of severity and distance, which accompanied 
them, interposed themselves between her and the ob- 
ject of her rejoicing ; and stayed in its course the 
full tide of her happiness. 

Of what nature then was her offence ? On the 
instant that she recognised her Lord, she, as it may 
be gathered from His injunction not to touch Him, 

q2 



228 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

did what amounted to an expressed intention of some 
such action, — that is, she made towards Him and 
would, with a wonted and allowed freedom, have 
affectionately laid her hands upon His Sacred Person 
— had not His striking words, and, no doubt, im- 
pressive action arrested her movement. Thus much 
had she ventured to do. But in this so natural an 
exhibition of affection towards One to Whom she 
was so largely indebted, there would seem to be no 
good reason why she should not touch Him. 

Surely, we are not to account this action errone- 
ous or sinful, because of the surpassing dignity of 
His Person, and because it is too high an honour 
for sinful man to approach, much less to touch Him. 
No, for the freedom she sought, we cannot but re- 
member, was one to which she had been before, 
under the highest sanctions, admitted. When she 
anointed His feet first, and afterwards His feet and 
hands both, then she had touched and been com- 
mended for the act. Indeed to Magdalene this re- 
buke must have come with a startling force ; for our 
Gracious Saviour was not wont to keep Himself 
so separate from those whom He had condescended 
to regard as brethren. How did the rude multitude 
use to throng and press upon Him ! 1 Had He not 
too, suffered but three days before, (not indeed, the 
gentle touch of an affectionate female hand) but the 

1 See Bp. Andrewes, Vol. III. p. 25, to whom, in the deter- 
mination of the question here discussed, it will be seen, I am 
greatly indebted. 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 229 

scourge, the sharp thorny crown, — nay, the spitting 
of a rude soldiery ? 

It may suggest itself too to our thoughts, how 
some touched Him, in order that they might extract 
virtue from Him ; and why might not Magdalene so 
touch Him now — now that He presents Htmself to 
her mind as having risen with a yet greater power 
" of healing in His wings" than before He possessed ? 
But indeed, we may not plead this as her intention 
in then seeking to touch Christ. She was not 
thinking then of herself. She revolved in her mind 
neither bodily nor spiritual blessing. It was a simple 
— a very natural desire which moved her to this ac- 
tion. It was an impulse to give room, play, expan- 
sion to her feelings. What she had sought with 
long desire, she had, with enduring perseverance, 
found. How natural that she should entertain an 
eager longing to feel, as well as to know, that she 
was in possession again — to grasp with her hands her 
lost treasure ! ] And was this to be denied her ? And 
could not all the many strong testimonies of her 
love, afforded that morning, gain for her so small a 
favour ? 

Moreover, what are we to think of the reason our 
Saviour assigns for His prohibition? " Touch Me 
not, for I am not yet ascended." While forbidding 
her present too near access, He seems to promise 

1 Bp. Andrewes says here, " To love, it is not enough to hear 
or see ; it is carried further, to touch and take hold ; it is affec- 
tum uidonis, and the nearest union is per contactum." 



230 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

her, by way of some compensation, the favour of a 
future touch. " For I am not yet ascended," as 
though He had said, " when I am ascended, then 
you shall touch Me." But how should this be ; for 
in ascending and taking His seat at the right hand 
of His Father must He not, of necessity, be re- 
moved out of the reach of all human hands further 
than ever? The very reason why she is not to 
touch, to which we naturally look for a solution 
of our difficulty, is in itself the source of a prior 
difficulty. 

Did then this prohibition respect Christ Him- 
self ? or was it only said because of Mary ? Was 
it because Christ now contained within Him de- 
structive elements ? Would a too near approach to 
His glorified Humanity be a means to consume and 
destroy her ? 1 For as well Holy Scripture as hea- 
then story, speak of God' as a " consuming fire." 2 
But in seeking a reply to this question it is mani- 
fest, that we must consider our Lord Christ in a 
twofold aspect ; as He presents Himself to His 
faithful ones, on the one hand, and to the ungodly 
on the other. It is only to the ungodly that " His 
eyes which are as a flame of fire, and His feet like 
unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace/' are 
felt in their most terrible and dire effects. To such 
as the holy Mary He would rather be as " the tree 
of life, to be touched and tasted," 3 that she might 

1 Rev. i. 17. 2 Rev.i. 14, 15. Heb. xii. 28. 

3 Bp. Andrewes, Vol. III. 27. 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 231 

live by Him. We find then no reason, as far as 
Christ Himself is concerned, why she should not 
touch Him. And thus we reduce the whole matter 
within a smaller compass. The obstacle lies cer- 
tainly, either in herself solely, or in all mankind ge- 
nerally, as persons after His resurrection not fit to 
touch Him. 

Not in the latter. That our Saviour did not 
mean to exclude His brethren generally from this 
freedom is very evident. Coming to the eleven He 
invites them to touch Him — even desiring them to 
handle Him. Then again to S. Thomas He says, 
" Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands ; 
and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My 
side." ' Thus He withholds not His Sacred Person, 
but admits His disciples to a full freedom of access. 
Again, at His second appearing, certain women met 
Him on the way. And so far from rebuking them 
in their approach He suffered them to hold Him by 
the feet ; and what is very remarkable is that, of 
the women who so met and so touched Him, Mary 
Magdalene was one. 

So that our Saviour neither meant to exclude 
the brethren generally, nor her in particular. And 
yet He did exclude her on this special occasion, and 
the simple inquiry to which we are at length brought 
is, How is this that He suffers her to touch Him 
at one time, and forbids her at another ? The truth 
is, the prohibition is not confined to Mary as a 
1 S. John xx. 27. 



232 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

restraint applicable at all times. 1 It is confined to 
Mary as found in that frame of mind in which our 
Blessed Lord then met her ; and indeed to all in 
that, or in a similar mood. 

What frame of mind, what mood was this ? We 
may be sure some sad deficiency, — some serious 
error vitiated the whole tone and character of her 
action. 2 In truth, there was less reverence in her 
proffered touch than our Saviour had a right to ex- 
pect at her hands. When our Lord made Himself 
known to her, she exclaimed in her usual respectful 
and affectionate tone, " Rabboni !" — that, and no 
more. And as she thus saluted Him, she advanced 
towards Him in her usual prompt and earnest man- 
ner. Her love and zeal was not, however, mingled 
with that due reverence which He looked for ; for 
Son of Man though He was, and overflowing with 
human sympathies, her Lord now claimed the wor- 
ship due to God manifest in the flesh. 

She was, indeed, greatly at fault, no less in her 
address than in her action. Did such a salutation 
as Rabboni become the Magdalene, who had been 
looking in faith for so remarkable a sign of His Di- 
vinity as the great miracle of His resurrection? 
And where was the solemn reverential bearing in 
which such a belief should have found expression ? 
All that we may venture to allege, by way of some 

1 Williams on the Resurrection, 132. 

2 S. Chrysos. Horn. 86 al. 85 in Joan., quoted by Bishop An- 
drewes, Vol. III. p. 28. 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 233 

apology for the erring Saint, is, that she was carried 
away by excess of feeling. Her sorrow had just 
been extreme ; and now her joy was too unbounded, 
too overwhelming, too confused, to admit of her 
fully realizing the relation in which she, at the in- 
stant, stood towards Christ. But we may not alto- 
gether exonerate her from some defect of judgment. 
Christ had warned His disciples that His stay upon 
earth was to be of short duration ; that He was 
about to go to His Father. 1 She took no thought, 
however, of this. " Rabboni !" she said. Her mind 
was set too much on His chair of authority on earth; 
too little on His seat of glory and power at the right 
hand of God. His reason justifies this view. 2 He 
says, " for I am not yet ascended." He was then 
soon about to ascend. His meaning, therefore, is 
this : " You would touch Me, not as if you thought 
that I am the King of glory, and that the everlasting 
gates are about to open for Me ; but as if I were 
going to stay here on earth still : therefore, I say unto 
you, in such a frame of mind, Touch Me not !" 

We attribute, then, her rebuke to a certain pre- 
sent state of unfitness in the mind. It was a call to 
her for greater reverence. She was to learn that the 
time for the touch of the affectionate disciple was 
now past. No longer was there to be a bosom for 
S. John to lean upon ; no longer a touch of affec- 
tion even for herself. Her next touch was to be one 
of adoration at His feet. 

1 S. John xvi. 16. 2 Bp. Andrewes, Vol. III. p. 29. 



234 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

And this brings us to the concluding difficulty in 
the series. For why did others touch, to all seem- 
ing, as unfit as herself? Can we forget the unbelief 
of the disciples, especially of S. Thomas ? And yet 
these all were allowed to touch Him. Now, as re- 
spects their less worthiness, they were, indeed, more 
unfit for such a privilege than Magdalene. But then 
they were allowed in mercy to touch Him ; not to 
show their love to Him, but as a remedy for their 
unbelief; whereas we have reason to believe that it 
was, in some respects, the greater worthiness of Mag- 
dalene, 1 which induced our Lord to deny her what 
He so frankly imparted to others. From the faith 
she had hitherto evinced, He looked for a more per- 
fect realization in her of the change that had passed 
in Himself. He knew how the relation between 
Himself and man was soon to change entirely, and 
how in a mysterious way He was to become one with 
them, live in them, — be touched, in short, by them 
in a far other way than now Magdalene sought to 
touch Him. This was a farther step in belief, that 
He might have expected Mary would, at least, have 
been prepared to receive. But even holy Saints 
have faltered in their heavenward course ; and Mary 
stopped short of this exalted height of virtue. Her 
action betrayed a longing for His stay on earth. It 
afforded no proof that she had been dwelling on His 
promise to admit His disciples to an intercommunion 
with Him, — a more intimate kind of touch when He 

1 See Appendix. 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 235 

should have ascended into heaven. Therefore, He 
said " Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to 
My Father:" (" as if, till He were ascended, He 
would not be touched, and then He would. " *) " When 
again seated on My throne, then, indeed, the touch 
of affection shall be renewed, and pass between Me 
and Mine after a more perfect and heavenly manner." 
And to this effect S. Leo says, 2 " Then the Son of 
Man, Who is the Son of God, became known after 
a more excellent and sacred fashion when He as- 
cended to the glory of the Majesty of the Father, 
and in a manner ineffable, began to be more present 
in His Divinity the further He was removed from 
us in His Humanity. Then more highly informed 
faith began by mental apprehension to approach the 
Son, co-equal with the Father, and needed, there- 
fore, no longer the touch of the bodily substance 
of Christ, by which He was inferior to the Father : 
forasmuch as the nature of His Body, after its glori- 
fication, remained, the faith of believers was sum- 
moned thither to ascend where the Only -Begotten, 
co-equal with the Father, might be touched, not 
by the hand of flesh, but by the discernment of the 
Spirit. To this purpose is the saying of our Lord 
after His resurrection to Mary Magdalene, when 
she, personifying the Church, sought the privilege 

1 S. Augustine's sense, as quoted by Bp. Andrewes, III. 36. 
See Appendix, for an instructive extract from Andrewes. See 
also Williams on the Resurrection, 102, 3, 4, 5. 

2 S. Leo, Serm. II. de Ascensione Domini, p. 72. Lugdun. 1633. 






236 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

of touching Him. " Touch Me not, for I am not yet 
ascended to My Father," i. e., " I suffer you not to 
approach Me after a bodily manner, or to acknow- 
ledge Me by a carnal perception ; I put thee off for 
privileges more exalted and divine ; greater honours 
I am preparing for thee. When I shall have 
ascended to My Father, then shalt thou touch 
Me in a more perfect, more true way, apprehending 
that thou touchest not, and believing that thou 
seest not !" 

We learn, then, from this part of holy Scripture, 
that our Saviour will not suffer with impunity the 
irreverential bearing of the sons of men towards 
Him. In proportion to our knowledge of His 
Divinity, and of the advantages we have for ac- 
quiring a full conviction of it, so He exacts of us 
reverence and worship. When presented to man 
as only the Son of Man, sins against Him He said 
should be forgiven. It was when He should be 
presented to them under the full light of that teach- 
ing, concerning His Godhead and His operations in 
His holy Church, which should be dispensed to 
them through the gracious ministrations of the 
Holy Ghost ; and should be, with every advantage 
of knowledge and grace, rejected, that the sons of 
men were not to be forgiven in this world, or in the 
next. 

A thought like this should prevail with us to en- 
tertain such habitual reverence towards Him as may 
engender in our minds a full practical and abiding 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 237 

realization of His Godhead. It should render us 
cautious, for instance, how we speak of Him with- 
out thought — how we take His name in vain, — or, 
what is almost as dangerous, indulge in familiar ex- 
pressions concerning Him, or in warm devotional 
effusions and addresses of a sensuous kind. For all 
these ways of approaching Him have a tendency to 
blunt our sense of His awful Majesty and Divinity ; 
and in so far, to minister occasion for the disbelief 
and rejection of Him. 

And there was the more reason, my brethren, 
for this warning to us through Magdalene before 
Christ's Ascension ; inasmuch as now, after His 
Ascension, there is a peculiar liability and tempta- 
tion, so to speak, on the part of all Christians to 
irreverence to the person of our Blessed Redeemer. 
And this originates in the positive necessity we lie 
under, to be now touching Him continually in many 
ways and under many circumstances requiring in us 
habitual feelings of reverence to make us fully con- 
scious, at all times, that we are so doing. 

That blessed similitude to Himself in which 
God created man had been lost by the fall of our 
first parents. From that day to the day of the 
Resurrection, by which our Lord became trium- 
phant over the grave, He had been labouring to re- 
store man to his first dignity and to enshrine afresh 
in Him the Divine Image. To restore this blessed 
impress, He, discharging the penalty of our sins on 
the Cross, purchased a right to us ; and then as- 






238 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

cending up on high, entered upon His priesthood of 
intercession; and by means of the gracious gift of 
the sacraments of life, before by Him deposited 
within the ark and sanctuary of His body the 
Church, proceeded not merely to restore in us the 
lost image of God, but also to bestow upon us a still 
higher gift, — to infuse into us His own divine life 
and being. By these means He was to be in us, 
and we in Him, 1 — dwell, abide in us. 2 And so the 
Psalmist prophesied, "Thou art gone up on high — 
Thou hast received gifts for men." Why? "that 
the Lord God might dwell among them." 

Nor, in this connection, should we omit to adduce 
those passages of Scripture, which exhibit the co- 
operation of the Holy Ghost in this wondrous 
work of uniting man to God, — and, so to speak, ren- 
dering our manhood in some sort a participator in 
the Divine Nature, according to that prophetic inti- 
mation in the Psalms. " I have said, Ye are gods, 
and all sons of the Most Highest." 3 As, for instance, 
" The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that 
Jesus was not yet glorified ;" 4 and again, " It is ex- 
pedient for you that I go away: for if I go not 
away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if 
I depart I will send Him unto you." It was neces- 
sary, then, that Christ should ascend, that the 
Holy Ghost might descend to men. But not only 
had they the promise of the Holy Spirit, but the 

1 S. John vi. 56. 2 S. John xv. 4. 

3 Ps. lxxxii. 6. See Appendix. 4 S. John vii. 39. 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 239 

Apostles expected also the presence of Christ. 
And the text can be looked on in no other light than 
as conveying a similar promise to Magdalene. Our 
Saviour certainly promised, besides the presence 
of the Comforter, His own presence with His 
Church. a Lo, I am with you always." We may 
then rely upon it that we have Him dwelling among 
us in such a way as amply makes up that loss to 
the family of man which they incurred when, in His 
fleshly presence, He took leave of the mansions of 
earth. 

Now, though to the body of our Lord and 
Saviour there be no power of ubiquity in the 
nature of things possible ; but it must of necessity 
be either stationed in °;lorv at the ri°;ht hand of 
God, or in some other place -, 1 yet we do not the 
less confess that the Godhead of Christ gives Him 
power of ubiquity, and that He is able to be 
everywhere present among His faithful ones, and to 
impart Himself to them in that fullest sense of 
which, even the words of Scripture itself seem only 
to afford a faint image. For even when our Lord 
Himself describes the Divine union with man as 
an impartation of His body and blood ; we cannot 
but be sensible that, greatly expressive as these words 
are to signify the closeness of that spiritual incorpo- 
ration with Himself to which Christ in that won- 
derful mystery advances the faithful, they are yet, 
when compared with the true dignity and inex- 
1 Hooker. BookY. c. iv. 6. 






240 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

pressible nearness of the union, as far from convey- 
ing the reality intended as expressions taken from 
things carnal must ever be when applied to represent 
things spiritual. But this He Himself taught 
when He said, " The words that I speak unto you 
they are spirit, and they are life." 

And it was in the process of effecting this spiritual 
union, that in some mysterious way the offices of 
the Holy Spirit 1 were called in to co-operate with 
the graces of the Ever-Blessed Redeemer. And, 
moreover, it was this necessity which caused our 
Saviour to say that ''Except He went away, the 
Comforter could not come. And hence it is, that 
in this special relation He is called the Spirit of 
Christ. By and through Him, the links of union 
are kept up between Christ and His people. By 
and through Him the streams of life are conveyed 
from the Fountain of life. By and through Him the 
whole Church is impregnated with the righteousness 
of Christ. By Him, the new heavenly touch of 
our Blessed Lord, granted through Magdalene to the 
Church, is fully realized. 

What, then, my Christian brethren, it seems we 
are under a necessity of touching Christ. And, 
indeed, it would appear, that to have life in us we 
must touch ; nay more, feed upon Him, "eat His 
flesh, drink His blood ;" 2 — yea, by feeding be com- 
muted in a manner into His substance, " dwelling 
in Him and He in us." 3 

1 See Appendix. 2 S. John vi. 53. 3 S. John vi. 56. 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 241 

Even our children are not exempt from this same 
necessity of touching Christ. They are not left to 
themselves, till they are able to determine whether 
the benefits of the 'baptismal touch are equal to the 
responsibility incurred in touching. They choose 
not for themselves whether the Spirit of Christ 
shall take up His abode within them. So far from 
it, the obligations of the Christian parent compel 
him to make them members of Christ, — to raise up 
the New Man, even Christ in them, — to graft them 
into Christ's body. And such a close union as this, 
surely comes to nothing short of touching. 

Again, our convictions of our duty induce us con- 
stantly to come to the house of prayer, there to keep 
alive in us this baptismal image and presence of 
Christ. And who are they with whom we there come 
in contact ? We unite ourselves to some one small 
section out of those almost countless congregations 
of the Christian brotherhood which cover the earth, 
and constitute, in their collective character, that 
body known by the name of the Catholic Church. 
And herein the faithful come to learn how closely 
they are knit to Christ, — how they live in Him and 
He in them ; for, by this means, they enter into a 
visible union with His body the Church ; and they 
soon experience how closely united is the sacra- 
mental source of their being with that body : for in- 
deed it was even through the virtues, imparted by 
Christ to His body the Church, that they were 
spiritually generate ; and moreover, He has made 

r 



242 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

them entirely dependent upon it for the continuance 
of the stream of all the spiritual blessings and graces 
which they enjoy. 

And what though the heavenly original of that 
body is but faintly traceable in some few sainted 
persons who shine like lights in the world ; — what 
though to call a few poor sons of earth, when united 
in holy worship, by so august a name as a part of 
the visible body of Christ seem an illusion; yet it 
is by this small creek of the waters of grace, brought 
as it were to our doors, that we are united to that 
vast ocean of the spiritual life whose tide swells on- 
wards everlastingly from its primal source, in the 
Lord and Fountain of Life. These mortal eyes will 
be slow to discern the traces of a heavenly origin in 
things so obscured by objects of sense ; but the 
divinely illuminated eye of faith will not fail to re- 
cognize them, faint though they be. Like sparks of 
light they yet linger amongst us, though as ever 
threatening to fade from our view. They yet linger, 
as though some faithful ones were found worthy of 
their longer stay. What, indeed, is visible of Christ 
here on earth, is the least part of Him. Earth is 
but the footstool, — Heaven the throne of Christ. 
We are allowed only to see, as it were, the base of 
those everlasting hills to which the glorious acts of 
the Christian hosts have advanced their fellowship. 
That far-off shore — its golden waters — the myriads 
of the saints as, in happy troops, they mingle on the 
glittering sands, or ascend in gladsome throngs to 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 243 

the cool groves, these are all hidden from our sight. 
Nevertheless our union with them is as real to the 
eye of faith, as though we now were conversant 
with their pure abodes — their blissful ways. For 
the part which is unseen, in regions celestial, enjoy- 
ing the state of triumphant beatitude, is not more 
Christ's body than the part which is seen. Though 
the greater part, it is yet not complete without the 
less part. Sufficient for us if we see, in this our 
lesser part, His body. 

His holy body, then, becomes visible here — just 
visible. Here He only very partially, very faintly, 
— enough for faith, (no more,) reveals Himself ; 
but what then? Must we always fully discern 
spiritual objects to be sure of our nearness to them. 
No ; for how then will faith, " the evidence of things 
not seen," have its proper exercise ? Though, then, 
in this sacred house, you see it not with the outward 
eye ; yet, here we are brought — oh, that we could 
constantly preserve the consciousness !— to that thin 
partition-wall which divides earth from heaven — the 
things of sense from the things of eternity. Angels 
are here. The Spirit of the Holy God is here. The 
Blessed Jesus is here. His presence Who fills all 
in all, in a more special and real manner, so to speak, 
(being in the midst of us, yea, even where only two 
or three meet together,) fills these courts of the 
Most High, and by His Divine Essence, as by the 
air, is the worshipper clothed upon. But can this 
be, and there be no touching ? 

r 2 



244 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

And if, in these ways, it is true that we draw so 
near to Him, so also especially in that rite which is 
with a peculiar reference to this very truth of His 
Divine Presence on earth, called the Holy Com- 
munion. For herein we touch no mere point linked 
on by union with Him — no mere member. We do 
not extract virtue through His robe, — from His 
pierced hands, or His feet ; but from His pierced 
side, the fontinel nearest His heart. " In no other 
ordinance," it has been well said, " is the Blessed 
Presence so nigh, so assured, and so awful." ! 

Since, then, my brethren, we must needs touch, — 
and it is so dangerous to touch in a wrong, and so ne- 
cessary in a right way, — let us well consider the 
danger to which we are exposed, and arm ourselves 
with the proper cautions against it. 

Our Lord was greater (by how much !) than the 
Jewish altar ; greater than the functions of those 
who might alone serve thereat; greater than the 
ark of the Living God. Now Uzziah was thrust out 
of the temple, a leper, for meddling with the first. 
For the second, — the two hundred and fifty that of- 
fered incense in the matter of Korah (who being only 
Levites, thus intruded upon the priesthood,) these 
were consumed with fire from the Lord. And for 
the third instance, — what "deadly destruction" came 
upon the Philistines for seizing the ark : how the 
Lord smote the men of Bethshemesh for looking 
into the ark : how the Levite Uzzah was smitten of 

1 Moberly on the Sayings of the Great Forty Days. P. 93. 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 245 

God, and died by the ark, for merely touching it, — 
taking hold of it when shaken : these are examples 
sufficiently familiar to us all, as the avenging deeds 
of a jealous God, watchful to punish the spirit of 
unrighteous intrusiveness. 

If these things, which bore only a sacred relation to 
the Divinity — instruments of Divine power, not chan- 
nels of Divine grace, — were thus protected against 
profaneness by God, how much shall He resent, with 
jealousy, intrusions made upon those holy places and 
things in which He permanently dwells, and those 
persons through whom He constantly energises, 
brought as they are, under the Christian dispensa- 
tion, into more intimate relations with Himself than 
ever heretofore ? It was of old but once and again 
that the creature was impregnated with the Divinity; 
but since Christ's Ascension it is so continually. 
Once a tree was thrown upon water, and the bitter- 
ness became sweet : ! once the temple was filled with 
a cloud, " the glory of the Lord, so that the priests 
could not stand to minister, because of the cloud :" 2 
once water healed a dreadful leprosy, 3 and, at certain 
seasons, the troubled waters of a pool healed various 
diseases, one at a time : 4 once iron swam : 5 once a 
lump of figs healed a king. 6 Thus was the creature, 
at various times under the old Covenant, impreg- 
nated with a Divine power. But now, under the 
new dispensation, it is redeemed with man's redemp- 

1 Exod. xv. 25. ' 1 Kings viii. 10, 11. 3 2 Kings v. 14. 
4 S. John v. 4. 5 2 Kings vi. 6. 6 2 Kings xx. 7. 



246 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

tion. That which with man was made subject to 
vanity, has with man been restored, to minister to 
man in blessing. When of old they were taught to 
sing the new song of the redeemed, they said, " Let 
the field be joyful, and all the trees of the wood re- 
joice before the Lord." 1 This exultation of all na- 
ture was the wonder-work of that tree on which the 
Divine form was suspended. Now water, impotent 
before, heals, not now one, and then another, but re- 
generates 2 all who may be compelled 3 to come in, 
and be made sons : now bread strengtheneth, and wine 
maketh glad, not the body merely, but the heart of 
man : now not one temple, but many temples, are 
filled with the glory of the Lord, and still the priests 
stand to minister ; for the " glory of this latter house 
is greater than that of the former." 4 No clouds are 
needed where stand the regenerate. The Lord of 
the new-born drives the mist from before His feet, 
and reveals Himself to the hearts of His faithful 
ones in the robe of light and the mantle of grace. 

It is true, that no longer do those stern judg- 
ments of God, which in former times oft punished, 
with a swift condemnation, the violation of holy 
things, force themselves upon our mind and sight. 
Few are punished now as were Korah, and Saul, and 
Uzzah. It would seem as though the long endur- 
ance of God were acharacterist ic appointed to shine, 
with a yet greater effulgence, under the new than 

1 Ps. xcvi. 12. 2 S. Luke xiv. 23. 

3 S. John iii. 5, 4 Hagg. ii. 9. 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 247 

under the old dispensation ; but still we have mani- 
fest tokens, from time to time, that behind the veil 
of earthly things He is present ; and though slow in 
exhibiting wrath, His judgments against wanton, 
and perverse, and untractable offenders are not the 
less certain. 

Indications of His wrath against profaneness have 
not been wanting in the annals of ecclesiastical his- 
tory ; and only those who are bent upon rejecting 
all evidence that tends to establish facts, which they 
are averse to recognize, will refuse to open their 
eyes to the existence of such marks of Divine inter- 
ference under the Christian economy. And if we 
have shown in this discourse, that all consecrated 
things bear a perpetual relation to Christ — that He 
never forsakes — disowns what has been consecrated 
to His service, how should we be careful to keep 
our hands clean of all desecration of holy things. 
" Touch not Mine anointed !" The all-scrutinizing 
eye of God knows what are His, though length of 
time has elapsed, and many possessors have occu- 
pied. 1 On how many possessions is the Lord's 
wrathful eye resting: and how oft with fateful 
threatening is His voice lifted with the warning, 
"Touch Me not!" 

Scarcely less dangerous than this is our failure in 
the recognition of the Divine Presence when in the 
House of God. If Solomon had occasion to caution 

1 See passim the late republication of Spelman's History of Sa- 
crilege. (Masters.) 



248 NEARNESS TO CHRIST [SERM. 

the Israelite to " keep his foot when he entered" the 
Sanctuary of the God of Judah, shall we be lacking 
in circumspection when we come into the presence 
of Jesus Christ and His Eternal Father ? Ought 
we not, in that august Presence, to exhibit the most 
complete subjection of our whole frame and body, 
that all our several members, like ready instruments, 
may make sweet music to their Maker's glory. Let 
us here at least put far from us the " foot of pride, 
the hand of presumption." Here let us gratify no 
"roaming eye," indulge "no listless ear." Here 
let there be no lounging arm, no stiff knee. 1 To 
render a truly spiritual service to Almighty God 
may require time and much holy perseverance for 
its accomplishment ; but there seems something in- 
excusably faulty in the acts of that man, who refuses 
to give to God that which, without great effort, any 
man may do, — the service of His body as an earnest 
and first fruits of the service of the soul. 

But to pass from temples made with hands, let us 
acknowledge how near we ourselves are brought to 
God, Surely, when we contemplate ourselves as 
temples of the Living God, of the Holy Ghost, 2 we 
may well exclaim, " I am fearfully and wonderfully 
made !" What care, what circumspection have we 
need of here ! " Know ye not that your bodies are 
members of Christ ?" What deep thoughtfulness 
and consummate care is necessary that we do not 
defile the presence seat of Christ in us, — that we do 
1 Bp. Andrewes, iii. 34. 2 2 Cor. vi. 16, 19. 



XIII.] A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 249 

no violence to His indwelling with us. O, my 
brethren, let none of us be found to " take the 
members of Christ, and make them members of a 
harlot." Shall we allow the enemy of God to har- 
bour there, even in His citadel, a Christian's body ? 
Let us be ever mindful that our flesh and blood are 
no longer Satan's ! Christ hath redeemed them, — 
made them Divine. " What concord, then, hath 
Christ with Belial V n None; we are to be separate, 
no longer touching the unclean thing, but touching 
Christ, and wearing His pure robe of righteousness. 
But if we have to grieve over those who are in 
danger of carelessly touching Christ, shall we not 
be in great fear, too, for those who, while they seem 
to be ever seeking to come near, and to touch 
Christ, yet seek not aright. One word for these, 
and I have done. Who may hope to touch Christ, 
unless he follows humbly in the way of holy faith 
which Christ Himself has pointed out ? If he 
will not be received into His arms, — be washed in 
His bath of regeneration, — be sealed with His holy 
sign of the Cross, how may he hope to touch Christ, 
or to be touched of Him ? If there is a carnal, or a 
fleshly touch, such as Magdalene sought before His 
Ascension, and such as Romanists would seem to 
seek now long since His Ascension ; so also, we have 
seen, there is a spiritual touch. Will they not come 
to Him, that they may receive in Holy Confirma- 
tion from His hands, blessing His own ordinance, 
1 2 Cor. vi. 15. 



250 NEARNESS TO CHRIST A CALL FOR REVERENCE. 

the Sevenfold Spirit ? Will they refrain, and keep 
aloof, and not come, that He may impart Himself 
to them in Holy Eucharist ? How, then, shall they 
touch Him ? What other way hath He shown us ? 
Through earthen vessels, indeed, these things are 
done, whom He has vouchsafed to dignify by calling 
them the stewards of His mysteries, and fellow 
workers with Him. Glorious privilege, that mortal 
men should be advanced to such a dignity ! But 
surely none are ever so profane, as to forget that we 
are but instruments. Who is sufficient to preside 
in the solemn assembly, and to superintend the won- 
der-workings therein of Divine grace, save only He 
Who said, " Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world V 9 



SERMON XIV. 

THE MISSION OF LAYMEN IN TEE CHURCH. 



S. John xx. 1/. 

Go to My brethren, and sa\ unto them, I ascend unto 
My Father, and your Father; and to My God and 
your God. 

Strange it is that our Lord Christ should not have 
communicated these tidings of great joy to the twelve, 
rather than to Mary Magdalene. They were Apos- 
tles, men chosen by Himself to witness to the truth. 
He had Himself, but a little while before, given 
them their commission to preach the Gospel, and 
administer the blessed Sacrament of His body and 
blood. Who so fitting, then, as they to be the first 
at once to hear and to communicate the tidings of 
such an important gospel truth, a matter of so great 
interest to the whole Church, as that of Christ's 
Ascension into Heaven ? They were Apostles not 
only chosen by our Lord, but sent, with mission 
from the Holy Ghost, for the work and office of 
Ambassadors of Christ to the sons of men : they 
were dispensers of grace and stewards of the mani- 
fold gifts of God, advantages fitting them peculiarly 






252 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM. 

for their high office of proclaiming and teaching, 
both in word and deed, the sublime doctrines of the 
Christian religion. And what was Mary Magdalene 
that she should take precedence of men so amply 
endowed, at once with authority and power, for the 
work of Evangelists ? She was only a pious, peni- 
tent woman. 

We see, then, that our Blessed Lord, for some 
wise purpose, chooses not an Apostle, but one with- 
out commission — not an ordained, but an unor- 
dained person for this first communication of Gospel 
truth. This, it must be confessed, is very remark- 
able ; and doubtless it will be found, on a due in- 
quiry, to have been so ordained " for our learning, 
upon whom the ends of the world are come :" for 
in Holy Scripture nothing is accidental, but all has 
its meaning and its object. Not only as it serves to 
express the immediate purpose for which it was 
written, but also as it serves to instruct the ages 
that come after, the Word of God is " a lantern to 
our feet, and a light to our paths." 

Why, then, were the Apostles not chosen for the 
first communication of this good news ? Let us 
consider, that such was the state of despondency 
into which they had fallen in consequence of our 
Lord's death, — so much did they think on the event 
of Christ's death and burial, that there was an 
end to all their great hopes of His reigning on 
earth, that no longer had they any heart or spirit in 
them. They sat disconsolate, downcast, hopeless. 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 253 

To such depression of feeling did they give way, 
notwithstanding our Lord had so often warned 
them that He must needs die the miserable and de- 
grading death to which He finally submitted, and 
given them at the same time encouraging hopes 
of His resurrection. As then they had lost heart, 
and lost faith, how could they be fitting persons 
for such high honour as that which our Saviour re- 
served for the Magdalene, who in many remarkable 
instances had shown that some thought, at least, 
of His words concerning His future resurrection 
was haunting her memory, and that she entertained 
such faith in them as to make her unwilling to give 
up the hope of His return from the grave ? 

So that we no longer wonder that Magdalene was 
chosen to be our Saviour's messenger to His dis= 
ciples, in preference to the Apostles, even on per- 
sonal considerations. 

We now come to see the reasons of this choice in 
the teaching intended to be conveyed by it. Here 
we have a gospel message of the highest importance 
intrusted to a woman. While the ordained servants 
of God were passed by, a person extraordinary was 
delegated to convey tidings of Him even to them. 
In effect, a kind of prophet's power was being exer- 
cised, while those who had received the Holy 
Ghost for the work and office of the ministry, were 
suffered to remain in silence. To what important 
line of truth, then, does so remarkable a fact direct 
our attention ? 



254 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM. 

It will be found, I think, to point to that momen- 
tous subject for the consideration of a congregation 
of believers, the vital interest which the lay people, 
no less than the clergy, have in the welfare and pro- 
gress of the Church and kingdom of our Blessed 
Redeemer. 

In all times of the Church of God, whether in the 
first ages under the Jewish Ruler, or in " the last 
days " under Christian princes, it has pleased Al- 
mighty God to employ a kind of double agency for 
her w r elfare, in the creation of an influence, corrective 
of her discipline, — an element of a laical as well as of 
an ecclesiastical character. And this has been so 
ordained, not more as a check on the rise of a too 
unlimited power in the sacerdotal brotherhood, than 
by way of assistance to its efforts for the advance- 
ment and extension of true religion ; and also that 
the people might be taught, that not only are they 
to look to be instructed by the Church of God in 
all ages, but also that they have a lively and deep 
interest in all which concerns her ; and responsibi- 
lities of the utmost importance, each man according 
to his talent, to fulfil towards her. 

It is not the object of this discourse to adjust the 
relations existing between ecclesiastical and lay rule 
in the Church, but simply to declare that such a re- 
lation does exist, and to insist upon the consequent 
duties which devolve upon the laymen of the Church 
from their connection with it. We are, therefore, 
willing to remind ourselves, how, from Moses to 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 255 

Solomon, and from Solomon to Simon Maccabseus, 
the Jewish princes were wont to interfere, with the 
approbation of God, and the applause of man, even 
in affairs ecclesiastical. Nor, I think, can any one 
fail to be much struck, when meditating on the 
question of the power of rulers to interfere in things 
sacred, with the account of Solomon's proceedings, 
on the occasion of the consecration of the temple to 
the worship of God. 

But apart from this ordinary power of interference 
in matters of sacred discipline belonging to Chris- 
tian rulers and kings, we have other instances to 
adduce. It has often pleased the Almighty to em- 
ploy an extraordinary instrumentality in His Church, 
where the usual instruments would seem to need 
assistance and support, — the check of restraint, or 
the spur of new life and vigour. Witness the se- 
venty elders. We read that " the Lord came down 
in a cloud, and took of the spirit that was upon 
Moses, and gave it unto the seventy Elders." Wit- 
ness, more particularly, two of them that remained 
in the camp, even Eldad and Medad, who also pro- 
phesied ; of whom Moses said, when Joshua would 
have had him forbid them, " Would God that all 
the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord 
would put His Spirit upon them." And in saying 
this, he anticipated surely the day foretold by the 
prophet Joel, when the Lord would pour out His 
Spirit upon all flesh, and the sons and daughters of 
our Sion should prophesy, her young men dream 



256 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM- 

dreams, and her old men see visions/' Witness, too, 
the extraordinary prophetic powers given to various 
men under the Old Testament, — Elijah, Elisha, 
Daniel. The prophets appear to have been a suc- 
cession of men raised up by Almighty God, from 
time to time, according to the emergent needs of 
the Church, by way of assistance to the regular 
priesthood, and to raise them from the corrupted 
state into which they too often, from whatever 
causes, declined. The High Priest indeed wore the 
Urim and Thummim on his breast, and could con- 
sult it as an oracle. But, nevertheless, we see that 
God was pleased to employ also another agency in 
the school of the prophets ; a school, indeed, which 
became, in some degree, a regular and established in- 
stitution of the country : so that when Saul prophe- 
sied, they said, wondering, since he had received no 
commission, and had not been educated in .the regu- 
lar schools, " Is Saul also among the prophets V n In 
this light, also, may be viewed the extraordinary 
powers vested in the judges from Joshua to Samuel. 
And more resembling such occasional instruments 
of Divine inspiration, as we would immediately refer 
to in this discourse, are such holy persons as De- 
borah, Huldah, Judith, the blessed Virgin, her 
cousin Elizabeth, the pious Anna, and the aged 
Simeon; all of them instances of an agency employed 
by God in revealing His will, distinct from the re- 
gular and ordained channels of Divine grace. 

1 See also 2 Kings vi. 1 ; ix. 1 . 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 257 

And no less is this twofold influence observable 
in the institutions of the Christian Church. Of what 
the graces of the Christian laity consist we may 
partly conceive, by the high and glorious titles they 
bear in Holy Scripture, of " kings and priests unto 
God." Under the Jewish dispensation, a type of 
the Christian, God's people were told by Moses that 
they should be unto Him " a kingdom of priests, 
and a holy nation." 1 He foretold, in this prophecy, 
what was to be the exalted privilege of all who are 
entered into the kingdom of grace. And this truth 
even the schismatic Levite, Korah, in like manner, 
though greatly abusing and misapplying the true 
force and extent of it, points out where he contends 
with Moses and Aaron, and declares that " all the 
congregation, every one of them, are holy." 2 And 
corresponding with this, we find that, by S. Peter, 3 
the body of Christians are addressed as " a chosen 
generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a pecu- 
liar people ;" and again as "a spiritual house, a holy 
priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable 
to God by Jesus Christ." 4 And in the Revelations, 
from St. John we learn that " He hath made us kings 
and priests unto God and His Father." 5 And in 
effect, we have the witness of all ages of Christianity 
to the fact, that every Christian does indeed receive at 
his Baptism those high graces and privileges, which 
correspond to the intention and plain meaning of 

1 Exod. xix. 6. 2 Num. xvi. 3. 3 I Pet. ii. 9 ; 1 Pet. ii. 5, 
4 See Bishop Beveridge in Appendix. 5 Rev. i. 6, 

S 



258 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM. 

these titles of Holy Scripture, as bestowed upon every 
member of the Church, whether layman or eccle- 
siastic. All alike, by holy Baptism, are made ser- 
vants and priests of the Most High ; all alike are 
blessed with high and rare gifts of the Spirit, and 
called to a ministry of holiness. Each child, as it 
comes forth from the waters of the font, comes forth 
as Christ's faithful soldier and servant ; a child of 
God, to stand in a priestly house, separated unto 
Him, to worship Him in His temple with holy wor- 
ship. The blood of the great High Priest, of Him 
Who came by water as well as by blood, imparts its 
life and efficacy to the waters of Baptism ; and the 
newly-made child of God becomes a participator of 
the benefits of the sacrifice of Christ • yea, in such 
sort a participator of those benefits, that Christ, 
his Elder Brother in the flesh, teaches him through 
His Apostles to regard himself as one in that spiritual 
house which He has built, the stones of which He 
has cemented with His blood ; one of that holy priest- 
hood which, through the power of His own everlasting 
priesthood, He has advanced to the high dignity of 
"offering up spiritual sacrifices, 5 ' through Himself, 
to the Eternal God. Yes, each soul so gifted at the 
fontal wave, goes forth into the world of darkness 
and realm of Satan, in the strength of that new life it 
there acquired, a missionary of the Gospel of Christ, 
as much bound to be, in his degree, in word and in 
deed throughout life, a prophet of the truth, and a 
living example of the power of the Cross of Christ, 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 259 

as any, whether Bishop or Priest, tied up by holy 
vows to the more immediate service of our Blessed 
Master. 

Aod in exact accordance with what I have now 
said, we find that there have been many eminent 
examples among the laymen of the Church, in all 
periods of its progress. Yea, kings and queens have 
indeed become the " nursing fathers and nursing 
mothers " of the Church, " bowing down to her with 
their face toward the earth." 1 Such an one was 
Constantine, of whom the venerable Hooker says 
that he was an emperor of such virtue, that " he made 
conscience to swerve unnecessarily from the customs 
which had been used in the Church," and that " of 
reverence to Bishops, and their spiritual authority, 
he rather abstained from that which himself might 
lawfully do, than was willing to claim a power not 
fit or decent for him to exercise." Such, also, was 
our own Alfred, of whom a recent writer 3 says 
that " he was a man qualified by many eminent gifts, 
both to restore the altar and maintain the throne," 
and that " he was the most enlightened member of 
the Church of England." How rich indeed, in lay- 
men of approved piety, are the annals of the Church 
of England. Take only these times succeeding the 
Reformation, and how numerous are the distinguished 
sons of the Church, who have put forth their best 
energies in the cause of true religion. Before the 

1 Isaiah xlix. 23. 2 Hooker, VIII. c. viii. § 8. 

3 Churton's Early English Church, 206 and 212. 

s2 



280 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM. 

mind's eye rise, in quick succession, the noble 
Falkland, the energetic Strafford, the meek Walton, 
the learned Dodwell, the pious Nelson, and a host 
of others who, in their day, sustained the arms of 
the priesthood, as ever and anon, during the Lord's 
battles, they faltered in weakness. 

Often, indeed, has it seemed to be the peculiar 
province of the lay-churchman to stir up the flag- 
ging spirits of the ecclesiastic, and bid him rush 
to the Lord's battles. Often, when the Bishop or 
Priest has sat immured, like the Apostles, despond- 
ing because of the immensity of his work, and his 
own seeming helplessness, has some messenger of 
good, from among the Lord's people, been sent to 
him with a word in his mouth, a sort of message 
like that we are now treating of in our text. " Go 
tell him I ascend. Tell him that My throne, how- 
ever lowly its state and power be on earth, how- 
ever apparently now depressed, is still really in course 
of being more and more exalted unto the perfect 
day. My cause is not failing, though perplexed. Its 
march is now, as ever indeed it must be, through 
trouble. I ascend, though he, amidst the dust and 
clouds of earth, discern not My secret way. I as- 
cend the same Lord of power and might as in the 
old times. Bid him go forth with holy confidence ; 
let him not fear for the issue. My arm is no more 
now than heretofore shortened that it cannot save." 

But then it will be said, If this be so, and words 
from the Holy Spirit of God are indeed put into 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 261 

the mouths of lay -people, and if it fall sometimes to 
their lot to be the channels of conveying inspiring 
truths to the appointed interpreters of God's will, 
what are we to understand by this, and in what must 
it not end ? How shall we know the Spirit's 
teaching from that of every false pretender that may 
rise up in God's name ? 

A question, my brethren, of infinite concern ; for 
how many are there who have risen up professing 
to have been sent, who indeed have not been sent of 
God ? But here I note, how this commission of 
our Lord is effectively restrained, so that no con- 
struction injurious to religion can be put upon it. 
It is not " Go and tell all "people," but " Go and 
tell My brethren," that our Lord says to Magda- 
lene. This commission is something like Christ's 
words to the messengers of John the Baptist, " Go 
and tell" (not the world at large but) " John " your 
master ; for he who is the appointed witness to Me, 
is the proper person duly to attest My claims. 
Mary's commission is not to extend to a preaching 
and declaring her Gospel-tidings to all the world, 
but only to some special persons, His brethren. 
What brethren? "Who be they," (says a holy 
Bishop of our Church) " those she went to ? To 
whom went she? To His disciples in the next 
verse. They then, the parties He meant, they, His 
brethren !" l Now these were the Apostles, not the 
brethren at large ; the same men in fact to whom the 
1 Bp. Andrewes, Vol. III., p. 42 ; see also Appendix. 



262 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM. 

Angel had once before directed her and her compa- 
nions. " But go your way and tell His disciples 
and Peter," i.e. " Tell that special set of His disciples 
among whom Peter is conspicuous ;" and who were 
they but the Apostles ? So that she was to tell the 
Apostles. To this point her liberty extends, and 
beyond this it is restrained. She was to tell, not 
to do. Her commission did not extend to acts. It 
is plain then that even had the Apostles, the then 
authorities of the Church, made no use of her 
tidings, she herself had no further work, no further 
occasion for action. When she had delivered her 
message, on them lay the responsibility of either 
disclaiming its authenticity by refusing to receive it, 
or of setting to it the seal of confirmation by giving 
heed to its revelation. Had they neglected to hear 
the message, she was restrained from any attempt 
to usurp their functions. 

In such a spirit, surely it was, that Judith proposed 
her counsels to the Jewish Church of her time, when 
in straits, and suffering under sore distress. It is only 
when her counsels are received and approved of, that 
she proceeds to put them into execution. In like man- 
ner surely we must understand the Blessed Virgin as 
proposing meekly her wishes, at the marriage feast 
to her Divine Son, and with His consent proceeding 
to fulfil them. So that in so fearlessly acknow- 
ledging the existence of spiritual gifts in our unor- 
dained brethren, let it not be supposed that we are 
affording an opening, or giving any encouragement 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 263 

to the pretensions of irregular teachers. " Without 
the Bishop, do nothing/' says S. Ignatius. In all 
our movements we must endeavour, even should our 
ecclesiastical superiors appear to our minds to be 
shrinking from the responsibilities of their high office, 
to secure their assent and approving co-operation ; 
and if, by the inscrutable decrees of Providence, it 
should happen that they refuse their concurrence 
with our lawful desires, we have no remedy, but only 
to wait, in patient well-doing and prayer, for the 
times when the hearts of the princes of the Church 
shall be in the " hand of God, as the rivers of wa- 
ter." 

And hence we may, with some profit, draw the re- 
flection, that, if only those men who, at various times, 
have risen up from among the general body of Church 
members, and conceived of themselves that they 
were endowed by the Grace of God w T ith spiritual 
gifts, and have acted in His Church in a spirit cor- 
responding with such an imagination — if only such 
men, I say, had been content, after the example of 
Mary Magdalene, to confine themselves to a simple 
communication of their supposed inspired messages 
to the Elders of the Church, and to submit them- 
selves in patience, and in a full trust that their 
cause, if it were of God, must finally prevail, what 
evil might have been spared us ! Surely we should 
not have had so great reason, as now we have, to 
mourn and groan in our prayers for deliverance 
from all heresy and schism. It may be that great 



264 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN . [SERM. 

bodies of sectaries, which are gone out from 
amongst us, might now, in this season, when the 
Church of God is unusually tried, and is like to 
be yet more tried, have been found fighting the 
Lord's battles, under one banner, against the in- 
fidel, the scoffer, the indifferent, and the sunk in 
sin. O, in that great day, when all things shall un- 
dergo the searching trial of the Lord of the Church, 
and when He shall seek to know why this or that 
battle, waged b}^ the faithful, was unsuccessfully 
prosecuted or shamefully lost ; and why the enemy 
of souls gained a vantage post in such and such a 
portion of the encampment, and strewed the ground 
with the blood of the slain ; how then will one and 
another who, like Dathan and Abiram, have risen 
up to tempt the Lord's people from their allegiance 
to their appointed rulers — how will they shrink as they 
become manifest, under the serenely awful gaze of 
the Lord of the Church and His assembled saints ! 
And now we have only to draw a few practical re- 
flections from what has been said. What is it then ? 
Such a voice as Magdalene's saying to us, " The 
Lord is ascended, is on His throne," hath gone 
through the length and breadth of this land, and 
hath raised the aged priests, the young levites 
of our Sion — from their despondency. No one 
at all acquainted with the exertions which holy 
men amongst us have, of late years, been making 
for the advancement of true religion, but must 
admit that an extraordinary call of the Holy Spirit 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 265 

has aroused the Church to action. We have heard, 
as it were, a mighty trumpet-stirring voice, giving 
no "uncertain sound." While ecclesiastics were 
dumb, and divines grew pale, and good men kept 
silence, as error in doctrine and corruption in practice 
stalked abroad, and all that were of authority trem- 
bled at the anticipated issue ; such voice as was the 
voice of Magdalene to the Apostles was heard speak- 
ing to the leaders of Zion's hosts. A deep feeling, 
very different from the cold thoughts of a former 
age, was fast getting possession of men's minds. A 
religious craving, springing up men knew not how, 
save that it was of no carnal growth, — a religious 
craving, coming men knew not of what earthly 
origin, but only that it came from heaven, arose 
in the hearts of the faithful, and sought to be 
satisfied ; and it asked satisfaction wmere it knew 
it could alone be safely found, in the bosom of 
the Church. To the priests and doctors of our 
Zion were conveyed the glad tidings of such a 
state of feeling, — the voice of God's people crav- 
ing their full privileges. The Clergy gave heed to 
the voice, shook themselves from their dust, and 
gave out a clear answer to its warning note. They 
committed their ways to the wise disposal of a Mer- 
ciful and Gracious God, and began the good work 
which was sought at their hands, with unflinching 
hearts and high purposes ; and, though encountering 
difficulties and severe disappointments, alike from 
the desertion of friends and the opposition of foes, 



266 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM. 

are yet, all men may see it, by the blessing of God 
so far prevailing, that we may say even now, in 
the midst of great sorrows of heart, " Where 
the wild boar had rooted up, there is the vine 
again nourishing, covering the hills with the sha- 
dow thereof, filling all the land, and stretching 
out her branches even unto the sea." Yea, let 
us gladden our hearts with the thought that the 
breaches in our walls are being repaired, that our 
Christian armour is no longer allowed to rust, and 
that our men are alike more confident and more in- 
telligent in their resistance to the foes of our salva- 
tion. Such, indeed, is the case throughout all lands, 
wherever the Church of England carries her doc- 
trine and her discipline ; and perhaps no place, how- 
ever retired, but feels the gracious impulse in some 
degree, more or less, as God dispenses His blessing. 
What then remains, my brethren, but that we 
with all our hearts and souls — lay people no less 
than clergy — strive to help on this good work in its 
progress ? We all, my brethren, have a stake and 
interest in the doings of the Church. The privileges 
of the Church of Christ are ours in common. Let 
us wisely remember how even a Korah can tell us, 
" All the congregation are holy, every one of them." 
Let none of us, therefore, whatever our station, be 
backward in our degree and according to the mea- 
sure of our several talents, to give all such aid as 
we may, to the sacred cause of religion as it is 
making its advances amongst us. Would to God 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 267 

all lay-people would see their real interests, and 
how inseparably they are bound up with the advance- 
ment and welfare of the Church of Christ. Would 
that they were not deceived by the strength of mis- 
leading passions, and the storm of factious cries, 
and could be induced to make, as indeed they have 
every reason to do, common cause with their bre- 
thren of the Clergy — men of whom I dare affirm 
that they are ever showing themselves the truest 
friends to every principle of rational and religious 
liberty. Would that the prominent idea of the 
Church entertained by them, were no longer that of 
a highly respectable profession ; but of an institu- 
tion in which the highest interests of mankind, both 
in time and in eternity, are involved. This is what 
we want, we confess it, to see in our lay brethren, — 
that spirit of devotedness to the interests of our holy 
religion which arises out of the feeling that the 
Church is their possession, was founded for their 
sakes, the salvation of their immortal souls : that 
though, indeed, there must be rulers in it, as in 
every other institution, at once to guide and instruct 
them, yet they themselves have spiritually as dear 
an interest in it as we all feel we have, in a civil 
point of view, in the soil and free institutions of this 
favoured land of our birth. 

We wish, in short, that the power of the Clergy 
and of the Church should be looked upon in that 
true light, in which it was designed to be regarded ; 
as a trust from God for the good of the souls and 



268 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM. 

even bodies of all the members of the Church alike ; 
and not as though it were only some ingenious 
fabric of influence reared up by a particular order of 
men, the better to secure the effectual government 
of the people under bonds of religion and morality. 
We know how evil-affected men have so described 
it ; but this suspicion it has not deserved ; as even 
the annals of history, though with a somewhat too 
reluctant avowal, show. On the pages of the im- 
partial historian, with few exceptions, it does not 
fail to exhibit itself as the great fosterer of arts, 
letters, civilization, and I will also say of freedom. 

Would then that, in an intelligent spirit, our un- 
ordained brethren would rally round their Clergy, 
and fighting under the banners of the principles of 
their Church, encourage their often depressed and 
discomfited teachers, by letting them know, — yea, 
by reiterated endeavours to imprint upon their 
minds the expression of their hearty desire for spi- 
ritual privileges. 

All have it in their power to effect some good in 
the kingdom of Christ. The pious and the wealthy 
and the noble among the laity have it in their power 
to effect who shall say how much good, 1 by the for- 
wardness of their zeal. Have we not, in these our 

1 It is a painful and for the laity, I must say it, ought to he a 
humiliating subject of reflection how small a proportion of the lay 
members of the Church, as compared with the clergy, are to be 
found registered as subscribers to her great societies and charitable 
institutions. 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 269 

days, seen how, in the spirit of Magdalene, some of 
the excellent of the earth have proposed to those 
who now stand in the place of the Apostles, schemes 
of highest and holiest usefulness. Sacred institutions 
have been set on foot and ancient seats have been re- 
stored to the uses of piety ; waste places of the earth 
occupied, and Gospel thrones set up. These are 
indeed encouragements afforded by our lay brethren 
to their clergy ; and, in our thankfulness to them, we 
would only express the hope that, in proffering their 
valued aid for the advancement of religion, they would 
carefully study the true genius and principles of that 
holy institution which they seek to assist, that they 
may be wise and safe protectors of that Church 
which some, from a too rude and incautious handling, 
let their intentions have been ever so good, have rather 
injured than benefited. Oh then, if any whom God 
hath blessed with a more than ordinary abundance 
of this world's goods, or if any upon whom He hath 
bestowed talents that might be devoted to the ser- 
vice of religion, — if any such be now listening to me, 
then let him consider with himself, What good can I 
do for this my Church that I may show myself a 
worthy messenger of glad tidings, and give one more 
proof, to strengthen the hearts of the ministers of 
the Church of God, that her Great Lord and Master 
is indeed risen up on high and sitteth at the right 
hand of power, making good His promise to be with 
us to the end of the world ? 

What good canst thou do, O thou member of 



270 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM. 

the Church of Christ ? Knowest thou not how 
wonderful is the power of piety when exhibited 
among laymen ? If the piety of a holy and devoted 
minister of Christ Jesus have such virtue in it as 
to affect thy heart and stir up thy soul to good re- 
solves, know that thine own pious example is 
winged with a power of which thou canst perhaps 
scarcely entertain a full consciousness ; for it ad- 
dresses itself not merely to thy neighbour, making 
him thoughtful by reason of thy seriousness ; but it 
strikes upon the strings of a far more diffusive and 
powerful strain — even upon the heart of thy spiritual 
pastor, encouraging him to renewed efforts and nerving 
his soul against the chill of many a disappointment. 

Be assured that thy devotedness, thy humility, 
and thy obedience to the Gospel, in many a time, at 
many a place will affect him. In these thy speaking 
virtues he beholds living proofs and witnesses to the 
immortal truths he is commissioned to inculcate on 
the dull heart of man. And when he marks them, 
they will seldom, believe me, fail to prompt him to 
higher efforts of duty, or to take shame to himself 
for his coldness and lack of spiritual energy. 

What good canst thou do ? Is it nothing that 
thou canst uphold the hands of thy Teacher in 
Christ? To the earnestness indeed with which 
thou dost seek the good things of the Gospel, to the 
zeal with which thou cravest after them, we look 
even for no small portion of those motives and in- 
ducements which are likely to prove most operative 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 271 

on the minds of those in authority as the best re- 
commendations to them of the soundness of that 
zeal by which we, as pastors of the spiritual fold, are 
actuated. When the parish priest's hands are thus 
lifted up, and he so carries the cries of his people 
for more spiritual food, to thrones and seats of judg- 
ment, then will the fathers of the people, as well 
civil as ecclesiastical governors, be encouraged to 
answer our hope, and listen to our assurances, that 
the Lord is ascended. 

But what canst thou do, thou child of a priestly 
house ? Every willing heart, every soul that values 
his privilege of being an inheritor of God's kingdom 
will surely strive to know all he may of that king- 
dom. He will study her laws, inquire with a 
curious and thoughtful mind into the meaning of 
all her precepts — endeavour with patience to un- 
derstand her institutions. He will interpret all he 
sees and hears in that kingdom with a reverent feel- 
ing, as though it were something above him ; as 
allowed of God, however strange to man. Or again, 
to allude to a more humble line of services. He 
will seek occasions to impart to others the saving 
truths he is himself acquiring to his soul's comfort 
and health. In every manner, whether by instruct- 
ing the young in religious ways, or by insinuating 
holy truths to the elder, will he seek to glorify 
Chrtst, and benefit the Church which He hath, by 
His blood, redeemed. Or again, to say the least, he 
will assist his teachers by a humble, devout, and 



272 THE MISSION OF LAYMEN [SERM. 

consistent course of conduct. How valuable, how 
influential, for instance, is the example of some 
person, whether young or old, who under all cir- 
cumstances is ever found at his accustomed place in 
the house of God, performing with a sober but fer- 
vent decency of behaviour, all his devotions in the 
sight of men and before the Presence seat of the 
Great God. 

What is it, then, thou canst not do ? Wert thou 
the veriest peasant, steeped in simple ignorance of 
all else but the riches of that sweet learning which 
the Gospel of Christ Jesus gives thee, still — won- 
derful is the privilege ! — thou couldest glorify thy 
Redeemer. Like many a rare gem, thy light might 
be indeed much concealed from the eyes of the 
Church militant now on earth, but the souls which 
now make up by far the larger part of the Church, 
even those who are gathered to a triumphant rest 
— they are conscious of thy worth however retired, 
and know how far and wide- spreading and pene- 
trating is that salt of Christian holiness which thou 
bearest about with thee. 

Let us all, then, even the humblest of her sons, 
know that nothing is more wanting to the Church's 
efficiency than the strengthening hands of a thought- 
ful and earnest-minded laity. In how many depart- 
ments is there room for co-operation. The Clergy 
look for counsel and for help at the hands of their 
lay brethren. All the stress in the battle against 
the enemy of souls should not rest on the Priest 



XIV.] IN THE CHURCH. 273 

alone. He wants co-operation from all his brethren. 
His privileges, such as they are, he holds not for 
himself, but for your sakes. It is the special part of 
your Clergy to warn, to arouse, to excite to action ; 
but if you do not generally respond to their teaching, 
must they not sink powerless and fall back into a 
greater lethargy than that from which they have 
been, by the blessing of God, aroused ? Believe it, 
we cannot maintain the spiritual warfare without 
support and encouragement at your hands. All 
our strength, indeed, is perfected in you. Respond 
to our labours, or we pine away in spiritual depres- 
sion. Do you continue thus to aid your brethren, 
who labour for you in the Lord. Come to us with 
your glad and gracious tidings. Arouse us from 
our sometime despondency ; and, with Magdalene, 
tell us that the Lord ascends, and on His throne 
awaits till, through our good works and labour of 
love, we thither ascend whither He has gone before. 



SERMON XV. 

THE MISSION OF WOMEN IN THE CHURCH. 



S. John xx. 17. 



Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to 
My Father, and your Father ; and to My God and 
your God. 

This passage of Scripture, besides calling our atten- 
tion very strongly to the mission of laymen in the 
Church of God, arrests our serious consideration on 
yet another point. If it is strange that our Blessed 
Lord should have chosen an unordained person, in 
preference to one ordained, for this first communica- 
tion of a high gospel truth of the greatest import to 
endless ages, it seems equally surprising that He 
should have selected, for the same distinguished pri- 
vilege, a woman, not a man — the weaker, not the 
stronger sex — the sex which, " being deceived, was 
in the transgression." 1 

And that would indeed appear to be no empty or 
merely curious question, which arises out of this 
consideration, — Why is man, " the head of the wo- 
1 1 Tim. ii. 14. 
t2 



276 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

man," 1 passed by, and woman, whose " desire was to 
be to her husband who was to have the rule over 
her, 5 ' 2 advanced in this commission to a post of such 
pre-eminent dignity ? 

Let us, before venturing to answer this question, 
enter upon a few preliminary considerations. And 
first, let us observe that there was great need, at 
this period, that some encouragement should be 
afforded to womankind. Even Christianity itself, 
which was designed to elevate her in common with 
the whole human race, had those elements in it, 
which, but for the provident care of our Blessed 
Lord, would have resulted in effects upon her of a 
depressing character. For our Blessed Redeemer, 
in taking upon Himself the form of man, must 
have given occasion, as much to woman to be de- 
jected as to man to exult ; since, that fact alone 
considered, she might have been a prey to anxious 
fears lest her nature should be, under these circum- 
stances, less embraced in His redeeming act than 
that of the more favoured sex. 

As, too, men were to be chosen as the proper mi- 
nisters in the application of the great benefits once 
for all purchased for man by the redemptive act of 
the Cross, and women to be expressly shut out from 
that office, and suffered not even to speak in the 
solemn assemblies where the memorial of their re- 
demption was to be perpetually maintained ; it was 
to be feared that men, on the one hand, might from 
1 1 Cor. xi. 3. 2 Gen. iii. 16. 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 277 

hence conclude the superiority of their claim to the 
mercies of Jesus ; and women, on the other, be left 
to doubt of their equality of hope in the privileges 
and blessings of redemption. Indeed, notions of 
inferiority, even as a being destined for salvation, 
could hardly be suppressed in her mind, from the 
consideration that " Adam was first formed, then 
Eve," — that priority in creation had been accorded 
to the man, — " that the woman was created for the 
man, not man for the woman," — and that " power," 1 
or a covering had been placed upon her head, as a 
mark of her subjection to the man. 

Moreover, not to dwell upon those inclinations 
in which, from her weakness and submissiveness by 
nature, men would indulge, to overlook her just pre- 
tensions to equality of salvation in the kingdom of 
the Redeemer ; it is to be considered that as woman 
had been first in the transgression, and bore her re- 
proach as having led our father Adam into disobe- 
dience, — and as a doom of suffering and a mark of 
her subjection had been imposed upon the woman 
by God ; so there was danger lest this penalty of her 
sin should operate to her prejudice in the estima- 
tion of mankind, when our Blessed Redeemer should 
remove the curse which, mainly through her in- 
strumentality, had been brought into the world • and 
her position, in the commonwealth of the Christian 
Sion, be marked by circumstances alike degrading to 
her dignity and prejudicial to her usefulness. 

1 See Bloomfield's Greek Testament, on 1 Cor. xi. 10. 



278 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [sERM. 

One surpassing dignity had indeed been conferred 
upon woman. Although of man's sex was the Re- 
deemer, yet woman had indeed received the unspeak- 
able privilege of herself bearing that Redeemer • and 
as her nature and sex had been taken from man 
without the woman at the first, and thus, through her, 
all men from the first man Adam ; so, as it would 
seem, as if to put her on an equality with man, in 
this very point of superiority allowed to him in 
creation, out of woman, without the man, came 
man. By the Divine power, woman compassed 
the Man Jesus Christ, and through Him the res- 
toration of all men, thus making compensation for 
that ruin which, through her, came upon all men. 

Still, infinitely great as was this gift to woman, it 
might have been deemed to have been bestowed 
only in furtherance of the redemptive act ; and as 
an act of necessity, whereby it might be secured, 
that Christ should be of the nature of man. It 
might not have been accounted a privilege specially 
conferred upon womankind. And, indeed, had she 
been excluded from an eminent place and considera- 
tion in the application of that redemptive act, great 
must have been her sorrow and humiliation ; for if 
some such signification, as that we are now consider- 
ing, of God's will as to the participation of women 
in ministerial privileges, were not to have wrought 
encouragement in them, what would there have been 
in the actual every-day circumstances of their posi- 
tion, to create a feeling in their minds that their place 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 279 

in the Christian economy was one of surpassing im- 
portance ? In the solemn assemblies of the faithful, 
there would have stood before the throne of God 
no woman, to minister and to offer up prayers spe- 
cially on the part of women. Man, indeed, when 
standing there alone, stands there the representative 
of male and female, offering up to God for both. 
And what though they might know that, as the 
Blessed Saviour on the Cross atoned for man, the 
whole nature of mankind, and not more for man than 
for woman ; so in the processes involved in the great 
ministerial work by which the remedy of the Cross is 
applied to our sins, woman, being but one with the 
man, and there being in this relation " neither male 
nor female," does in reality want no representative of 
her own sex : yet, even with this knowledge on her 
side to assure and content her, is it not evident that 
there are still circumstances in the state of woman 
which would make her too greatly depressed, and man 
too elevated above her, for the mutual benefit and re- 
ciprocated happiness of either sex ? Certainly, on the 
advent of Christ's kingdom, all the thoughts of wo- 
men concerning themselves must have been of a dis- 
couraging complexion. S. Paul's words, " I suffer 
not a woman to teach," and his remarkable reason, 
" for Adam was first formed, then Eve ; and Adam 
was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, 
was in the transgression ;" and again, " It is a shame 
for women to speak in the Church ;" and his com- 
mand that they should " learn from their husbands 



280 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

at home :" as though he had urged " the woman 
taught once, and ruined all:" 1 all such sayings 
and considerations as these would have come with 
a peculiarly depressing force upon them. And it 
would have appeared, we cannot doubt, as though 
they were all excluded from any power of communi- 
cating the Gospel, and participating in that glorious 
privilege, the labouring for the extension of the 
kingdom of the Redeemer, and as though they 
were not to be looked upon with the rest of the faith- 
ful as "kings and priests with God," had not this 
privilege been granted to the Magdalene, and women 
from henceforth assured that a province of exertion, 
conferring upon them a kind of co-equal dignity 
with men in the Christian dispensation, has been 
duly provided them by Christ Jesus. 

Accordingly, S. Augustine says — " In this is to be 
considered the benignant dispensation of our Lord, 
Who thus brought it to pass, that the female sex 
should be the first to bear tidings of His resurrec- 
tion. Since through the female sex man fell, through 
the female sex is man restored ; as a Virgin had 
given birth to Christ, a woman announced that He 
had arisen ; through a woman is death, through a 
woman is life." 3 

1 S. Chrysos. Horn, on Tim. p. 71. Lib. of Fathers. 

2 In quoting the above passage, Mr. Isaac "Williams elegantly 
says — " It was weakness made strength, and death made life ; 
and manhood set aside for the strength that is of woman." — Re- 
surrection, p. 135. 









XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 281 

And we know well that these tendencies to the 
degradation of women, which we have assumed to 
exist before the introduction of Christianity into the 
world, are no creation of the fancy merely. Let it 
be considered that the condition of women, before 
the influence of Christianity began to tell upon the 
world, was such as to lead men to a low appreciation 
of their worth as responsible and immortal beings. 
Under the institutions of few, if of any, nations was 
their condition much advanced above that of the do- 
mestic slave ; and even under the laws of that 
favoured people who had God for their continual Pro- 
tector and special Guide, the system of concubinage 
was a permitted evil, which though it recognised a 
very considerable distinction between the wife and 
the other females of a household, yet rather ad- 
vanced her to the post of family-overseer than to 
those unapproachable and reciprocated privileges 
which are the proper characteristics of the married 
life. Under a system in which, with occasional ex- 
ceptions, the wife was looked upon as little better 
than a domestic drudge, not as a "help meet for 
man," — in which the duties of the husband were the 
labours of the field, the interests of commerce, the 
struggle for political privileges or the hazards and 
perils of the warrior's life, and in which the duties 
of the wife were only to rear children and provide 
for the comforts of home ; — under a system in which 
the wife was but too often the more loved only be- 
cause she was preferable in external attractions to 



282 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

others, and but too often retained in her position 
from the power of her connexions rather than be- 
cause of her domestic virtues ; — under a system in 
which the internal advantages, moral and intellec- 
tual — the source of that variety and happiness which 
delights man and retains his affections to his home, 
were, save in rare instances, little valued and little 
cultivated, what room was there, in which the ex- 
pansive affections of so delicate a plant as woman 
might take root with vigour and put forth her ten- 
drils with firm and retentive hold ? 

Had then a man and not a woman been chosen by 
our Blessed Lord, for this, as he had been for all 
other high and distinguishing commissions connected 
with the act of redemption, it might have so seemed 
to leave woman without mark of dignity, and suffi- 
ciency of proof of restoration to God's favour. 

It was indeed the special care of our Redeemer, 
in restoring lost man to favour, to show His intention 
that that restoration was to include quite as much the 
weaker as the stronger sex. One great sign of the 
altered condition of things which the Gospel was to 
bring in, as respects women, was the distinguishing 
favour which Christ constantly showed to them 
from His conception to His resurrection. He would 
not suffer them ever to be downcast, and man ever 
to lord it over them without a check. And so, as 
some compensation for past degradation, He began 
to distribute honours among them, and elevated the 
penalty and curse, which they had incurred, to the dig- 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 283 

nity of a chastening tribulation. And first and great- 
est favour of all, He the Son of God, condescended 
to enter the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, — to 
make of woman a shrine for Himself ; thus, by a 
sure sign, indicating to man His purpose of in- 
dwelling for ever with him. Thirty years did He 
condescend to live in subjection to her, no less than 
to His father Joseph. Troops of women were ever 
in His train. Women He advanced to posts of mi- 
nistration about His Person ; and there they seem, as 
well as man, to have had their province and definite 
place. Nor do they share less of His regards than 
men. He raises the daughter of Jairus from death, 
— restores the widow's son to her arms, — cures the 
woman of Syrophenicia's daughter, and His attach- 
ment to the sisters Mary and Martha is so fresh in 
our minds as to need no comment. 

We are not surprised then that, though He suf- 
fered not women to wear the priestly robes and to 
be public preachers of the Gospel, yet He gave 
them this distinguished pre-eminence to rejoice in 
to all ages, that unto them was first revealed His 
own glorious ascension and session on the throne 
of heaven ; and unto them He committed the first 
revelation of such glad tidings to the Apostles. 
And this high and distinguishing mark of favour, 
we cannot doubt, was bestowed upon them, not 
more, as significative of the exalted place women 
were ever after to hold in the economy of the Chris- 
tian dispensation, than as a declaration of their 



284 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

original claim to be accounted, in a manner, equal 
with man. I say in a manner ; because, for ob- 
vious reasons, the claim of woman to equality was 
restrained in its application to them. The more 
principal and prominent labours of the gospel would 
devolve naturally upon men, which must in itself 
give to them a present superiority. There was, 
moreover, a necessity for subordination between the 
man and woman — an absolute equality between 
them being an impossibility, until we all arrive at 
those abodes where no longer is there " marrying 
and giving in marriage;'* and where, it may be, no 
longer can it be said, with regard to any practical re- 
sult, that the " woman was created for the man." 

These remarks may be fitly summed up with a 
passage from S. Chrysostom in general harmony 
with them ; — " The woman is reasonably subjected 
to the man : since equality of honour causeth con- 
tention. And not for this cause only, but by reason 
also of the deceit which happened in the beginning. 
Wherefore you see she was not subjected as soon 
as she was made ; no, nor when God brought her 
to the man, did either she herself hear any such 
thing of God, nor did the man say any such w T ord 
to her ; he said, indeed, that she was ' bone of his 
bone, and flesh of his flesh ;' but of rule and sub- 
jection he nowhere made mention unto her. But 
when she made an ill use of her privilege, and she 
who had been made a helper was found to be an 
ensnarer, and ruined all, then she is justly told for 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 285 

the future, ' thy turning shall be to thy husband/ 
To account for which, it was likely that this sin 
would have thrown our race into a state of warfare ; 
(for her having been made out of him would not 
have contributed anything to peace when this 
had happened, nay, rather this very thing would 
have made the man even the harsher, — that she, 
made as she was out of him, should not have spared, 
no, not him who was member of herself;) wherefore 
God, considering the malice of the devil, raised up 
a bulwark, viz,, this word ; and what enmity was 
likely to arise from his evil device, He took away 
by means of this sentence, and by the desire im- 
planted in us ; thus pulling down the partition wall 
(if it may be so called), i.e., the resentment caused 
by that sin of hers." 1 

We cannot doubt, my brethren, on a little re- 
flection, but that the elevated position, which, in 
this discourse, has been assigned to woman, has been 
realized for her, in the important sphere of influence 
and exertion she has fulfilled under the gospel dis- 
pensation. While we know that much of the labour 
of propagating the gospel consists in the leading, 
and, as I may say, outward and visible exertions 
made by men as the preachers thereof, women have 
also had their sphere of action assigned them ; and 
though theirs is, indeed, a less prominent province, 
yet it is one not the less real and essential to the 
progress of religion. Indeed, I doubt not we shall 

1 S. Chrys. Horn. xxvi. 3, on 1 Cor. xi. Lib. of Fathers. 



286 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

find it at once as definite in its limits, and as exten- 
sively and deeply influential, as that which man is 
called upon to discharge. For there are unmis- 
takeable proofs that the gospel, in advancing woman 
to her rightful position, has likewise secured to 
itself one of the most essential instruments to its 
success. 1 Christianity has been the means of amelio- 
rating the condition of women ; and they in return 
have, in all ages, under the benign influence of its 
precepts, exhibited virtues which, while they elevate 
their sex in the scale of being, cannot fail to recom- 
mend and advance that institution which fosters 
them. 

And of this a few considerations will sufficiently 
convince us. The childlike character is a recognised 
type of the gospel spirit. The same Divine Teacher 
Who taught us that we must have the mind of little 
children, points out also that this characteristic of 
His followers exhibits one principal phase alone of the 
full gospel character ; for He recommends Chris- 
tians to combine together with " the meekness of 
the dove" also the " wisdom of the serpent." Now 
this combination of somewhat opposite elements 
constitutes a character, towards attaining which 
women by nature were enabled to make the first, 
if not the most perfect advances. Beautifully in a 
comment upon our text has it been said, " The twi- 
light of the morning is with women more apt to re- 
ceive impressions ; the full light of day is with men 
1 See Appendix. 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 287 

more slow to admit, but more firm to retain." 1 As 
by nature capable of the more peaceable and gentle 
virtues, so they the more readily received that mild 
and patient impress of temper, which is one main 
element of the gospel character. And as, from the 
absence in them of the more manly virtues, they 
would come to feel the constant Christian obligation 
to make concession and not to contend, they must 
have been taught, sooner than the more unyielding 
sex, that discretion and wisdom which could alone 
shield them from the effects of a habit of pliancy, 
so strengthened in them at once by nature and 
religion. 

Hence it was that Christianity soon acquired 
some of its most glorious triumphs, in the ennobling 
effects it produced on women. It gave an aim and 
end to their being, of which they were not before 
conscious ; and they answered to the healthful 
impetus by showing conduct and wisdom where 
before they had given way to impulse and to 
passion. 

Moreover, it has been always remarked how much 
more strongly the devotional spirit has developed 
itself in women than in the other sex : which made 
S. Chrysostom say when comparing them with men : 
" But as to those things wherein they excel, these 
are no longer common ; their sanctity, I mean, 
their fervency, their devotion, their love towards 

1 Williams on the Resurrection, p. 137. 



288 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

Christ." 1 Whatever be the reason, it is undeni- 
able that faith, hope, and charity — the three great 
elements of pure religion — are principles more 
readily admitted to have their natural influence 
upon them than upon men : and hence the Chris- 
tian religion must have always derived and must still 
derive no inconsiderable degree of advantage from 
the talents and graces which women bring to its 
assistance and advancement. 2 

Indeed, one may confidently affirm that wherever 
and whenever woman has been debased, man too 
has suffered debasement ; and wherever exalted, she 
has exalted also the liberal institutions which have 
advanced her. 3 

It is hence very manifest that woman has a dis- 
tinct mission, of the highest importance and of the 
most deep searching influences, to perform in the 
Christian commonwealth while militant here on earth. 

In what particulars are we to recognise that mis- 
sion ? It is evident that they are not of the more 
striking kind, and such as appeal to our view as 
from the surface of things. What is tangible and 
visible is pre-occupied by man. To minister at the 

1 S. Chrys. on Ephes. Horn. xiii. p. 252. Lib. of Fathers. 

2 Mr. Williams observes : " It is here in type, what has ever 
since been found in the Church ; the first impressions of faith 
and piety man has usually received from woman ; and without a 
Monica the faith had not been received by Augustine." — Resur- 
rection, p. 135. See also Appendix. 

3 See Appendix. 



XV.] IxV THE CHURCH. 289 

altar, and to teach the sublime truths of the Chris- 
tian religion by public advocacy have been un- 
questionably confined within the limits and range of 
man's responsibility. A less prominent, but equally 
influential range has been allotted to woman. Her 
great sphere is evidently in the retirements of home. 
The secret of woman's power transpires in the de- 
pendent relation she stands in towards man. Her 
province consists not in coming abroad to interfere 
with man in the direction of affairs. It is not to 
be looked for in the contention with him for politi- 
cal privileges, nor in any natural capacity for deter- 
mining questions of state policy or for arguing and 
making decrees upon theological truths and tenets ; 
else she had not been taught to look upon herself 
as a help meet for man. Her position involves 
in it no power of a like nature with his, and there- 
fore does not come into competition with it ; but it 
is a power which, where the reach of man's ability 
begins to exhibit symptoms of his need of aid, fills 
up the void which himself cannot, and only a help 
meet for him can occupy. In the quiet and unob- 
trusive, though secretly all-influential acts of a home- 
life consists the blessed province of woman. 

And this silent exercise of power — the grace of 
retiring woman exhibits itself in many ways. A 
woman will be found to contend for what is abstract- 
edly right and high-minded and honourable as dis- 
tinguished from that low view of things to which 
notions of expediency, and the oft entangling 

u 



290 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

maxims of the world are apt to make man descend. 
This is one way in which the mind of woman, by- 
force of its commonly viewing things from an ex- 
actly opposite direction to that which is taken by 
man, is calculated to give steadiness and elevation 
to his judgment which would otherwise in its mani- 
festations take a too worldly, not to say irreligious 
turn. 

Would time allow, how much more might be said 
of the many instances in which the peculiar influence 
of women is displayed in their relation to the king- 
dom of Christ. We must not, however, pass by 
one great and obvious sphere of their influence, than 
which there is none greater. It is that which de- 
volves upon them in their intercourse with children 
— the province pre-eminently of the mother, but a 
field of duty devolving very largely, at all times, 
upon females in general. It has often been pointed 
out how good and great men have owed much of 
their goodness and their greatness, and evil men 
much of their wickedness to their mothers. 1 And 
this observation has, no doubt, so much of truth in it 
as to suggest matter for earnest reflection to those who 
consider the power of maternal influence with that at- 
tention which it deserves, and are alive to the neces- 
sity that it should be rendered, wherever it may be, 
salutary and beneficial. When the mind is so 
ductile as it is in the state of infancy, every im- 
pression is greedily taken in ; and those impressions 
1 See Appendix. 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 291 

which children receive from one who is so con- 
stantly with them as their mother and who is so 
continually a source of love and fear to them, 
are doubtless more direct and lasting in their 
effects than those imbibed from any other quarter. 
It is here, as in other respects, that the weak things 
of this world are made to confound the strong. The 
father's strong wisdom is forgotten, but the lesson 
of the mother oft sinks deep into the sensitive intel- 
ligence of the child, and produces its fruits in the 
high-toned religion and morals of the man. 

Moreover God has been pleased to bestow upon 
woman, in a very marked degree, the quality of the 
soother and comforter of man in affliction. The 
Gospel teaches man to endure suffering, and woman 
seems in her weakness to have been set before him 
as an example of patient endurance, both teaching 
him how to suffer patiently, and helping him, with a 
peculiar felicity, to sustain suffering and trial. 

Consider then these four points ; the power of 
woman in a Christian Church as the first reflector 
of the Gospel type of character, — as indirectly the 
teacher of a high-minded and unselfish morality, — as 
the primal instructor and former of men's minds, in 
their infancy the source whence at least the germ of 
the future man proceeds, — and lastly, as the ap- 
pointed consoler of man under all his trials, the 
nurse of his sorrows, and gentle solace in all his 
course. 

How comes it to pass then, that since woman has 
u 2 



292 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

such a definite province in the Christian economy, 
she is rather left to chance and to nature to fulfil 
it, than committed to the genial influence of educa- 
tion ? If women are to take the lead in exemplifying 
some of the greatest Christian virtues, — if by them 
men are oft to be reminded of high and holy princi- 
ples and they are to make appeals to the more noble 
instincts of the human race, — if women are to be, for 
the most part, mothers, and to have the training of 
immortal souls at the period when they are most of 
all susceptible of durable impressions, — if they are 
designed to be the great comforters of men under 
trouble, their attendants in the chamber of sickness 
and of death, what preparation is that which they 
ordinarily receive beyond the discipline of nature, for 
a sphere of duty so exalted? Let any reflecting 
mind take a review of the state of education as it is 
carried forward in these our days for the improve- 
ment of woman. Inadequate as we confess is the 
education provided for males, yet in an infinitely 
more deplorable state is that for females. The 
Church may be said to have provided in the two 
principal universities and her grammar schools and 
in other institutions the means and machinery of 
such an education as no doubt, whatever may be its 
defects, is highly beneficial in its influence upon the 
male character. There is a recognised tone and 
settled bearing visible in the teaching conveyed in 
these institutions. If a Church education does not 
find in them the highest exponent it could hope to 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 293 

meet of what a Christian education should be ; it yet 
does meet with some traces of the steady pursuit of 
a principle ; it does discern some end, as their aim 
and object beyond the novelties and vanities of the 
passing day. 

But in the system of education to which parents now 
allow their daughters to be consigned, where, save in 
the rarest instances, shall we behold any object 
steadily set before the mind that is worthy the at- 
tention of a thinking, to say nothing of an immortal 
being ? What is the one end and aim of the modern 
accomplishments to which the tastes and habits of 
thought of the present generation devote so large a 
portion, shall we not say, nearly the whole of a young 
female's time ? Is not the system of female modern 
accomplishments directed rather to the one end of 
gaining the power to attract affections, than to that of 
retaining them when attracted, — to fit them forget- 
ting married, not for the state of marriage itself? 
To prepare young females, that they may secure to 
themselves an establishment, — not to fit them for 
discharging the responsible duties of married life — 
is, we cannot close our eyes to the fact, the great 
object of every effort which is made under the system 
now pursued. Whereas it should be freely con- 
fessed that, considered with respect to this world, 
the constituting woman a true help meet for man 
and therefore marriage is the true end of her 
education ; for in the wedded capacity woman finds 
the largest scope and field for the exercise of her 



294 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

proper ability. As far as it is distinguishable from 
that direction which male education should take, 
the training of woman should be essentially an edu- 
cation to constitute her a help meet for man. It 
should aim at cultivating those natural endowments 
for this sphere of duty which Divine Providence has 
bestowed upon her in labouring to effect all those 
improvements which culture and education are ca- 
pable of producing. 

To pretend to say what exact or definite course 1 is 
to be pursued, in order to produce the precise end 
which should be aimed at in female education, is out 
of the question in this discourse ; nor indeed would we 
say that any very precise course should be adopted. 
The suitableness, beauty and excellence of the edu- 
cation, we are speaking of, will altogether depend on 
the persons who are appointed to carry it out. Pro- 
vide some institution in which woman shall receive 
such an education as may supply the grand and 
capital want of this country,— female governesses 
imbued with the religious principles of the Church ; 
and you may safely leave all minor details to the 
operation and adaptive influence of instruction, 
time and mature reflection. 

One thing is certain ; we cannot hope that the con- 
sistent carrying out of such a principle as we have 
here advocated, if committed to the hands of irre- 
sponsible persons such as those who lead female 
education at this present, will prosper. Teachers un- 

1 See xippendix. 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 295 

fettered by a common standard and recognised prin- 
ciples and laws are of necessity subject to the fleet- 
ing doctrines and temper of the age in which they 
live for all that they do ; and, it will be readily con- 
ceded that, no parties are more naturally susceptible 
of such impressions than that pains-taking class of 
persons who, in defect of a more regular provision, 
have been allowed to place themselves at the head 
of female education. 

It is obvious then that in our entire system of 
education there is an essential defect. In a point 
where, of all others, we might have expected the 
manifestation of the most scrupulous care for the 
due nurture of woman, we find society, whose wel- 
fare is in the highest degree involved in woman's 
preparation for the responsible duties of her station, 
acting towards her as an utterly indifferent and un- 
concerned bystander. Yea and even our religious 
society upon which the temper of the female mind, 
it has been already shown, is allowed to exercise so 
extraordinary a force, has not aroused itself to re- 
cognise this manifest defect and provide against it. 

And is nothing to be attempted towards removing 
so great a reproach to us, as the neglect of providing 
a generally recognised and fundamentally religious 
education for our females ? In other Churches this 
defect is supplied, in some degree, by monastic insti- 
tutions ; but since the Reformation we have been 
left to depend upon the independent and desultory 
efforts of females. Not that we would, in any de- 



296 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [sERM. 

gree, desire to see any adaptation of the conventual 
system of education. The maxims of those devoted 
to such a life as the convent would of necessity 
affect those minds submitted for any length of time 
to their training. And perhaps the minds of future 
mothers would receive a tone from them too deci- 
dedly severed from that line of feeling and that train 
of ideas, upon which reposing whilst young as the 
germ of their future condition they by natural steps 
should ascend to the dignity of the marital and pa- 
rental estate. Though our duty may be to aim to 
make women in ever so high a degree angelic, yet 
it cannot successfully be done by making them 
o'erleap that intermediate step in their probation 
by which God has appointed that they shall arrive 
at perfection, the being a help meet for man. 

Some system, notwithstanding, of duly educating 
the female mind and heart for that exalted position 
she holds in the destinies of man is imperatively 
called for. Why, for three hundred years, the atten- 
tion of religious men has not been directed to the 
supplying a void so manifestly requiring provision, I 
leave for others to determine. The neglect is mani- 
fest, and we are suffering for it in the increased and 
increasing levity of mind which marks female so- 
ciety, reminding us often but too painfully, of the 
severe words of the wise king, that "as a jewel 
of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman who 
is without discretion." How seldom do we find 
woman able to take that high moral and religi- 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 297 

ous tone in her family which impresses her chil- 
dren, especially as they grow up, with that reve- 
rence for her which respects her judgment as well 
as her authority as a parent. " A gracious woman 
retaineth honour;" but now for " every wise wo- 
man" that "buildeth her house" how many are 
there that " pluck it down with their hands." 

In the meanwhile, until some plan 1 be devised by 
which so important a work may be carried into 
effect, be it the care of parents and of every person 
intrusted with the charge of young females, to do 
all in their power to neutralize the evil results of 
such a state of things. Let them inculcate upon 
their children the end and aim of their being as 
pointed out by Scripture, — that " the woman was 
created for the man" — that she is to be " a help 
meet for man." Let them sedulously withdraw 
their minds from that absorbing concern in trifling 
things which has so obvious a tendency to impart 
a tone and habit of levity to the sex. Let them 
discourage a love for the weakening allurements of 
dress and ornament. Let them teach them that 
"not gold nor precious stones, but the ornament 
of a meek and quiet spirit" is what they must 
strive to adorn themselves withal. And let them 
not fail, on all occasions, when they may have to 
choose instructresses for their children to make the 
necessary high moral, mental and religious requi- 
sites the first object of their search, and let mere 
1 See Appendix. 



298 THE MISSION OF WOMEN [SERM. 

accomplishments be an entirely subordinate feature 
of inquiry. 

"Mothers," says S. Chrysostom, 1 "be specially 
careful to regulate your daughters well, for the ma- 
nagement of them is easy. Be watchful over them 
that they may be keepers at home. Above all, in- 
struct them to be pious, modest, despisers of wealth, 
indifferent to ornament. In this way dispose of 
them in marriage. For, if you form them in this 
way, you will save not only them but the husband 
who is destined to marry them, and not the husband 
only but the children, not the children only but the 
grandchildren. For the root being made good, good 
branches will shoot forth, and still become better, 
and for all these you will receive a reward. Let us 
do all things therefore as benefiting not only one 
soul but many through that one. For they ought 
to go from their father's house to marriage as com- 
batants from the school of exercise, furnished with 
all necessary knowledge, and to be as leaven, able to 
transform the whole lump to its own virtue." 

Were parents so to provide for these dearest in- 
terests of their children, more often would men be 
blessed to realize the comfort of that saying of Solo- 
mon, " Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing 
and obtaineth favour of the Lord. Favour is de- 
ceitful, and beauty is vain. Who can find a virtuous 
woman ; such an one in whom the heart of her hus- 
band doth safely trust, who will do him good and 
1 S. Chrys. Horn. ix. on 1 Tim. Lib. Fathers, p. 74. 



XV.] IN THE CHURCH. 299 

not evil all the days of her life, who worketh wil- 
lingly with her hands, and is like the merchant-ships 
bringing her food from afar; who giveth meat to 
her household and a portion to her maidens, who 
stretcheth out her hands to the poor, yea who 
reacheth forth her hands to the needy, who openeth 
her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the 
law of kindness, whose children rise up and call her 
blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth her? " 



SERMON XVI. 

THE MISSION OE THE PENITENT IN 
THE CHUECH. 



S. John xx. 17. 



Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to 
My Father, and your Father ; and to My God and 
your God. 

We cannot dismiss this text, the last in the series 
of notices afforded us in the Scripture concerning 
the Magdalene, without expressing our wonder at 
another point which it presses upon our attention, 
and indulging in that train of reflection to which it 
naturally conducts us. Not only is it wonderful 
that a lay person should have been preferred, in this 
commission, to an ecclesiastic, and a woman to a 
man, but it is also most surprising that our Blessed 
Lord should have communicated His gracious mes- 
sage to S. Mary the Penitent, and not to S. Mary 
the Blessed. Most singular is it that He should 
have at all selected a penitent sinner for this ho- 
nour, but all the more surprising, when there was 
one of so unblameable a life as the Blessed Virgin 



302 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

through whom He might have conveyed it. If 
a woman must be the messenger of these glad 
tidings to the Apostles, who so fitting as she to 
whom was vouchsafed the greatest honour of all, 
even to be the mother of Christ Jesus, the Son of 
God ? If the greater were conceded to her, which 
was to be the mother of God, why not the less, to 
bear tidings of His ascension to heaven ? 

But here, for one reason, there would seem to 
have been exercised, on the part of our Blessed Sa- 
viour, a jealous care of His own honour. Perhaps 
it was that, foreseeing the extravagant honours that 
men would pay to the Blessed Virgin, His mother, 
He so provided against the occurrence of any extra- 
ordinary stone of stumbling in this direction, as to 
remove from the paths of His disciples a snare 
which the history of Christianity proves would have 
turned out to be but too seductive to them. Ready 
enough have all writers and teachers of the Church 
of Rome been to lay hold of the little opportunity in 
Scripture that is afforded them to speak at all of the 
Blessed Virgin, and so to construe that little as to 
elevate her unduly, and enthrone her in places and 
dominions where the unapproachable seat of Christ 
ought alone to affect the mind's eye of the be- 
liever. And so, our Saviour foreseeing, it may be, 
that this would be the disposition to which the car- 
nal minds of men would incline, determined that 
they should not have it to say that it was to the 
Blessed Virgin, that by the commands of Christ, 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 303 

the Apostles owed the intelligence concerning His 
Resurrection and Ascension, — that they should not 
have it to say that without the mediation of the 
Blessed Virgin even the Apostles could not receive 
instruction from the glorified lips of the Redeemer. 
All this, we cannot doubt, from the weak character 
of that which has been often advanced as legitimate 
argument to prove their cause, they would have 
alleged ; but Jesus in His mercy removed this snare 
from them by giving the privilege to another. 

But we shall perhaps better learn why the privilege 
was denied to S. Mary the Virgin, when we have as- 
certained why it was granted to S, Mary the Penitent. 

And here let us observe that the fact that Mary 
Magdalene was a penitent sinner, is no obstacle to 
Christ's choice of her ; but rather we may perhaps 
say, that the having lived more blamelessly would 
have proved a bar in securing His selection. For 
as the nature of the mission, so correspondently 
might, most happily, be the character of its re- 
presentatives. What sight more affecting to rebels 
than the embassy to them of one of their fellows 
who, having returned to his allegiance, proves by 
the favours of which he is the manifest subject that 
his late associates may expect mercy at their sove- 
reign's hands ? since, unabashed by the presence of 
one who had been in the same error with them- 
selves, they listen, with the more hope and confi- 
dence, to the offers of pardon of which he is the 
ambassador. Penitence is the sum and substance 



304 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

of the Gospel. The Gospel is essentially the glad 
tidings of the efficacy of repentance in making us 
at one with an offended God. There is, in its 
entire bearing, a manifest leaning to penitents. The 
first sight of the risen Redeemer and the first 
Gospel message to the Church are the privileges of 
the penitent Magdalene. The first seat in the col- 
lege of the Apostles is always assigned to S. Peter. 
Although thrice the denier of our Lord, his falling 
away became, as it would appear, the immediate 
cause of his establishment in his high place. Con- 
sequent on the experience he gained in his penitence 
and conversion, would seem to have been the bestowal 
of his commission to " strengthen his brethren" 
and the reception of its seals in the triple charge he 
received to feed the flock of Christ. Certain it is 
that, in quick succession with these events, the pro- 
vince of making a more authoritative and public 
declaration of the Resurrection and Ascension and 
all things pertaining to the kingdom was committed 
to S. Peter. And accordingly Bishop Andrewes 
says, " These two, the two chief sinners, either of 
their sex : yet they, the two whose lots came first 
forth in the lot of the righteous, in partaking of this 
news. And this to show that chief sinners as these 
were, if they carry themselves as they did, shall be 
at no loss by their fall ; shall not only be pardoned 
but honoured and stand foremost of all." 1 

Let us then conceive our Blessed Saviour as one 

1 See the entire passage in Appendix. 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 305 

portion of the meaning of the text, saying, " Go forth, 
O penitent Magdalene, do your mission ; tell My 
disciples, I ascend to My Father and your Father, 
to My God and your God. Tell them My work on 
earth is completed. The preaching of the Gospel 
of repentance is begun and My kingdom established, 
and now I am ascending to My Father and your 
Father, — to My Father with Whom I His Only Son 
have now, in My incarnate nature, obtained full right 
and power to mediate for you My erring brethren 
before His throne, — to your Father, for now indeed 
He counts you who were sometime aliens from the 
kingdom as His own adopted children, being now 
made members of My body and heirs of My kingdom ; 
so that henceforth the workings of sin in the flesh will 
no longer be a bar to His grace, but that still looking 
to My Cross He will allow to true and earnest peni- 
tence the continual outpouring of His Spirit, and the 
means of grace for the healing of your souls' wounds." 
Because then of the favourable eye with which 
the Gospel ever regards sinners, desiring earnestly to 
save them and to invite them by its graciousness, we 
readily see why Christ among other reasons chose 
Magdalene the penitent to the office of declaring to 
His disciples the great advent-day of His session 
on His throne at the right hand of God. And, in 
this point of view, well have ancient writers con- 
curred in giving her the title of " the Apostle to the 
Apostles." Her own person was emblematic of the 
character of that Gospel which, consequent on her 



306 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

communication to them, the Apostles were to preach 
to the world. 

It would seem right, then, that as we began this 
series of discourses by regarding S. Mary Magdalene 
as a penitent, so should we end. Indeed, we cannot 
doubt but that from first to last throughout the 
gospel account of her, Magdalene is pre-eminently 
designed to be viewed as a type of the entire Chris- 
tian progress — a progress which, beginning with the 
grace of God and the exhibition of a sincere and 
deep repentance, continues under the same gracious 
influence, showing forth the meet fruits thereof, 
and so persevering in the spirit of penitence unto 
the end. All throughout the life of Magdalene we 
see repentance exhibiting itself as the prevailing 
notion of her career. Her gifts to Christ, from 
first to last, never cease to be penitential offerings. 
Her devotion towards Him is ever augmented by 
thoughts of the depths of misery from which He 
has redeemed her. This is the true model of the 
Christian's course. With Baptism we enter upon a 
life of repentance. With the Lord's Supper and 
every minor ordinance we renew it ; and to the end 
of our days, in one way or another, in all that we 
do to conciliate the favour of God towards us 
through the merits of His Blessed Son, by prayers 
public and private and in securing to ourselves the 
benefit of the constant ministerial declarations of re- 
mission of sin, what do we but perpetually renew 
the spirit of repentance ? 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 307 

But let me not be misunderstood. This exhi- 
bition of favour towards penitents arises from no 
love on the part of our Blessed Lord to repentant 
sinners above His more consistent disciples, else we 
should doubtless have seen His human affections 
stirred up rather towards the erring Peter than 
called forth by the more blameless John : but it is 
naturally developed from the gracious character of 
the gospel, in displaying how much of mercy it em- 
braces within the wide reaching folds of its expansive 
principles. Its very aspect is made, if we may so 
speak, to look more tow T ards the penitent sinner 
than to the blameless liver. Accordingly, when 
the gospel kingdom is announced as near at hand, 
repentance is its burden. First, the forerunner of 
the Gospel, S. John the Baptist, calls upon all to 
repent ; next, our Saviour proclaims the Gospel, 
and still the word is " repent ;" and, as if no mis- 
take should be made among men as to the leading- 
character of its mission into the world, it sought 
directly its influence with the harlots and sinners, — 
the very description of persons who in the world's 
eye, most needed reformation and the law of re- 
pentance to be administered to them. The stern 
pharisaic spirit of self-righteousness is, on the other 
hand, most severely condemned, — the pretence to a 
superior and separating righteousness is everywhere 
discountenanced; and this notwithstanding that Pha- 
risaism possessed many most distinguished ornaments 
and upright men, such as were Nicodemus, Joseph 

x 2 



308 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

of Arimathea, and Gamaliel. The Old Testament, 
in the Book of Psalms, affords us an eminent speci- 
men of the true Evangelical spirit displaying itself 
even in legal times. The Psalms are universally 
used by the Church as being compositions most 
wonderfully adapted to Gospel times. Is it not 
very significant, in the point of view we are now 
setting before you, that their composer should be a 
penitent ? But, besides this,, you will observe that 
it was this very circumstance that, in some respect, 
he builds upon as fitting him to be a teacher. "Turn 
Thy face from my sins, and put out all my misdeeds. 
Stablish me with Thy free Spirit ; then shall I 
teach Thy ways unto the wicked, and sinners shall 
be converted unto Thee." 

And so, according to this type, has been the 
preaching of the Gospel. It has been a preaching 
of repentance rather than of righteousness. " I 
come not to call the righteous but sinners to re- 
pentance." For the righteous where are they ? 1 
The Gospel recognises none such. Thou Nico- 

1 Bishop Beveridge, iv. 117, 118. He doth not determine 
one way or another, whether there be any righteons persons upon 
earth, or no ; that is nothing to His present purpose ; for He 
speaks here only by way of supposition ; that supposing there be 
any righteous in this world, He did " not come to call them :" 
for they would not need to be called, no more than " they who are 
whole need a physician." As in that parallel place which hath so 
much puzzled critics and commentators — I mean the parable of 
the lost sheep, where our Saviour supposeth that " a man hath 
a hundred sheep, and that one of them being lost, he leaves the 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 309 

dermis a master in Israel, for all thy righteousness 
must be new born. All must be as little children. 
Thou Simon strictest Pharisee, who despisest with 
contumely the Magdalene, it is not thou but the 
penitent who is fit for the Kingdom. As yet thou 
knowest not what thou owest, or that thou needest 
remission. Thou O lordly Pharisee who thankest 
God that thou art not as other men, especially 
as yonder publican, thou art not justified with all thy 
righteousness, but he in his penitence. 

Everywhere, then, throughout the New Testa- 
ment, there is a studious care to represent in a due 
prominence this pervading spirit of the Gospel. 
And as, perhaps, the Blessed Virgin would seem 
less to symbolize it than Magdalene, the latter was 
chosen for the office of its representative. Penitents 
are the great and leading and most energetic spirits of 
the Redeemer's kingdom. A Magdalene, a Peter, a 
Paul, — they are the great and distinguishing Gospel 

ninety and nine to look after that ; and having found it, he re- 
joiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which 
went not astray." And then He adds, " I say unto you, that 
likewise joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, 
more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no 
repentance." Where He plainly speaks only by way of suppo- 
sition, that in case there be a hundred persons together, and 
ninety-nine of these be so just or righteous that they need no 
repentance, but one doth need it ; and if he accordingly doth 
repent, the holy Angels are more rejoiced at him than at all the 
others, because he gives them fresh matter of joy which the others 
do not. 



310 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

fruits, and they are sent forth in the spirit of 
penitence to stamp its tokens upon the world. 

That which all former systems and religious 
teachers had failed to accomplish, Christ now 
came to perform. All systems of religion had 
failed conspicuously in pointing out the great 
remedy for man's spiritual needs. No former sys- 
tem had inspired men with comfort and confidence 
in it as providing a fount for iniquities. No system 
had as yet pointed out the means whereby men, 
being cleansed from sin and renewed, could with con- 
fidence, and with the feeling of a loving, though oft 
erring son, approach the Presence seat of God. 
Even men of the purest lives failed to derive com- 
fort from the good, as contrasted with the errors 
and felt deficiencies of their lives. And, indeed, 
when we reflect upon the difficulties which beset 
even the Christian in his path, and when we see 
him so oft succumbing under them, blessed as he 
so eminently is with high Christian graces, we shall 
better understand the peculiar blessing and advan- 
tage derived from the special boon of the Saviour 
to a fallen world. 

For, consider how gradual are the advances made 
by a Christian soul under the best circumstances. 
Let the Christian teacher watch the progress of 
the spiritual life in his baptized catechumen. Let 
him think of the struggles which the child, boy, 
youth will have to make in order to gain the 
mastery of himself, even with the grace of the Holy 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 311 

Ghost, and under the influence of the most careful 
religious training. We then perceive that man, 
under circumstances the most favourable to a life of 
righteousness, does yet, as a fact, often swerve from 
the line of perfect rectitude, and sometimes even falls 
into mortal sin, so that his place among his brethren 
is lost to him. If, then, under the gracious influences 
of Christianity, such an one will be thus cast out 
from society, how much more, under legal and moral 
systems, must those whose offences are public fall 
miserably and without hope ? The publican and the 
sinner under the old systems, shut out from the 
higher places to w T hich the self-righteous will pre- 
sume to aspire and alone occupy, are shut out for 
ever. The religious world passes them by ; and, re- 
fusing its slightest sympathy, looks unconcerned 
upon them, in their nakedness and wounds, as did 
the Levite and the Priest on the helpless and dying 
traveller by the wayside. 

What then w r as wanting ? What but that which 
our Blessed Saviour hastened to supply ? A system 
which should provide for man's perpetual liabilities 
to falling, — which should encourage the sinner at all 
times to cling to Christ, — never to despair, — but 
still to march on with ever sustaining hope through 
the desert of this w T oiid, — if this day yielding to 
temptation and surprised by the irruption of sin, 
the next day recovering the lost ground and making 
the experience of defeat the basis of greater con- 
quests over self. 



312 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

And if such a system be needful for us as indivi- 
duals, it is also admirably adapted to our advance- 
ment when considered in our collective interests as 
constituting the nations and peoples of the earth. 
The world's maladies are stamped with no more 
universal an impress than with failure and vanity 
and vexation. The greatest philosophers, — the 
most untiring philanthropists must admit this fact. 
Now what must the minds of men, when suffering un- 
der the depressing influence of that liability to failure 
to which in their schemes of philanthropy they are in- 
evitably exposed, be inclined more to desiderate than 
encouragement and the incentives of hope ? Here 
then while, on the one hand, the world is ever craving 
after models of an ideal excellence and its children 
are fretful when called upon to endure the imper- 
fections and disappointments belonging to the state 
of all sublunary affairs, — the Gospel, on the other, 
teaches hope and patient endurance. While it dis- 
courages no efforts of man to rise in the scale of social 
being, — it yet rather teaches him to labour after his 
aim in the general cause of humanity with the prospect 
of disappointment before him, than to set his affections 
upon certainly attaining the direct object of his pur- 
suit. It encourages him to seek to fulfil his destiny 
in continued and renewed efforts at improvement, 
although suffering under the depressing influences 
of continual checks. While the ardent hope of the 
philanthropist to witness an immediate success is 
checked, he is yet encouraged to go on persevering 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 313 

in labours, the end of which is no longer to be 
within his own grasp or subject to the measure of 
his short-sighted views, but in the hands and under 
the all- wise and all comprehending direction of God. 
The Gospel comes in and harmonizes precisely with 
the true aspect of all things around him. It is a 
Gospel which provides for shortcomings as well in 
nations and peoples and in the whole progress of 
man, as in individuals. The struggles of the present 
are but an effort to rise upon the ruins and failures of 
the unsatisfying exertions of the past. Revolutions in 
systems or in governments are attempts to remedy the 
decay consequent upon the issues of some previously 
nourishing condition. To the despairing reviewer of 
the painful revelations of history, the Gospel offers its 
consolatory teaching, — being a system which pretends 
not to bring mankind at once to perfection, but which 
treats men and things and institutions as it finds 
them, expecting that they will have their risings and 
declinings, and accordingly encouraging them to 
bear the evils of a necessarily painful progress and 
probation without fretfulness and impatience. In 
short, in place of a sullen, hopeless, and baffled 
despair on the one hand, and inflated and presump- 
tuous hopes on the other, it teaches repentance of 
past errors, whether in morals or policy, and re- 
newal of exertion for the attainment of that goal 
whatever it may be, to which man's destiny as a 
corporate being is to conduct him. 

Yea, that its operations might be the more sue- 



314 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

cessful, the Gospel incorporated, as it were, the very 
spirit of penitence in the institutions and ordinances 
of the Christian Church. From first to last in all her 
sacred institutions, man is regarded as in the condition 
of the penitent, — as a being under penitential train- 
ing. Her most solemn affecting prayers are the 
prayers of wailing penitents. Her awful sanctuaries 
are the outer courts and porches from which the peni- 
tent beholds the eternal mansions of heaven ; and it 
is the prayer and spirit of penitence which is breathed 
throughout the whole course of her devout petitions 
at the throne of grace. In her very outward bear- 
ing and conduct she became an example to the na- 
tions, instructing them how to bear the retarded 
progress of their advance in light and civilization. 
Sanguine in her hopes, magnificent in the schemes 
of usefulness she proposes to accomplish, noble in 
her views of the dignity and power of her missions, 
courageous in asserting her rights, she seems ever 
to make greater pretensions than she is destined to re- 
alize ; and disappointment is suffered to fasten his re- 
tentive hold on many of her fairest expectations. What 
states and institutions, and all things in this world 
bear upon them — subjection to change and revolu- 
tion, — the Church of Christ also, as being a human 
as well as a divine institution, bears too in her own 
bosom ; but in thus bearing she impresses upon 
herself a stamp of endurance visible to ail men \ 
and in so doing teaches the nations the true spirit 
in which their blasted expectations may yet be pro- 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 315 

ductive of budding fruits, bestowing upon them the 
spirit to look forward to the future, and implanting 
in them that spring of action from which only the 
eventual height, perfection, and stability of man as a 
corporate being can be attained. Undaunted by the 
memory of the past, undeterred by an all pervading 
and inter-penetrating corruption, she, with youth- 
ful Josiah, rends the garment of her peaceful and 
royal estate, and fearlessly commits herself to the 
unsettling trials of reformation and renewal; and 
thus, just as a truly penitent man in renewing vows 
of righteousness draws in with the blessing of God 
fresh streams of grace from the Fountain of grace ; 
so does the Church ever and anon, as allowed to suf- 
fer in the providence of God from declension, receive 
an accession of fresh and invigorating blood into her 
veins, — and her young sons go forth clothed with her 
penitential spirit and, by the power of God, cut off the 
tumid excrescence and revive the fast- decaying limb. 
And how do such reflections as these affect us, 
my brethren ? They plainly instruct us, that through- 
out the whole course of our Christian probation, we 
are to regard ourselves in the humiliating and chas- 
tening character of penitents ; yea, all of us, without 
exception, as well he who has preserved his baptis- 
mal robe pure from the stain of mortal sin, as he 
who has fallen away from grace received into the de- 
filing depths of grievous iniquity. This is no forced 
view, my brethren, of our case before God. The 
Church so accounts of each of us. She demands 



316 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

repentance as the condition even of the admission 
into covenant with God of those so pure and spot- 
less as the (in will at least) unsinning babe. And if 
of the sinless infant, she demands repentance, she 
no less demands it in the adult who has passed from 
the state of a merely sinful nature into that in which 
its sinfulness has developed into action; and this 
not once but constantly through the whole course 
of his life. For so from her most faithful children, 
in every act of holy communion she demands a re- 
newal of repentance as one of the requisites to its 
due and worthy reception. 

And the exaction of this pre-requisite, for many 
reasons, is obviously beneficial to the Christian. 
First, The most advanced Christian knows not how 
much he needs repentance. The most devout and 
consistent can never compare himself by any certain 
judgment with the more erring of his brethren. We 
have none of us the balance in our hands by which 
to weigh the advantages and disadvantages belong- 
ing to our several positions, or to test the degree of 
help which our respective natural advantages afford 
to those which are spiritual ; and however strong the 
inference may seem to be that we have not greatly 
abused our privileges aud that others have, yet 
on the whole it is surely best for us all ever to 
humble ourselves now, that hereafter in due time 
we may be exalted by One Who knows and can 
weigh exactly the great mystery of our several re- 
sponsibilities. 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 317 

Secondly, That at best we so imperfectly perform 
all our exercises of penitence, of what kind soever, 
that at any stage of our Christian progress, we still 
need constant renewals of the acts and duties of re- 
pentance. We are, notwithstanding the greatest 
advances in piety at which we may have arrived, 
still liable to lamentable failings and shortcomings 
which, opening to our view more clearly than before 
the deplorable extent to which our nature has be- 
come corrupted, only serve to render us more sen- 
sible how, throughout the whole course of our 
mortal existence, we should regard ourselves, as by 
no means removed from the condition and obliga- 
tions of penitents. For indeed, repentance is, at the 
beginning of our conversion to God, but in an in- 
cipient state, whether we date that conversion from 
the time when "being born in sin and the children of 
wrath we become" by the waters of baptism " children 
of grace," or when after sinning against baptismal 
grace we renew our obedience and once again begin 
to cause our backsliding footsteps to retrace the way 
from which they have wandered. We do not, in 
short, know at first how to repent. We are either 
in ignorance of the extreme sinfulness of sin and of 
the necessity that our corrupt nature lies under of 
renewal, as in youth and before we are awakened to 
a full sense of our Christian privileges, — or, we find 
ourselves suddenly placed under the influence of a 
state of excitement from recent conversion, and ani- 
mated by a keen sense of the new obligations to God 



318 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

which true contrition has opened to our view and 
of the fresh responsibilities to which we stand com- 
mitted, while a tide of novel feelings has set in upon 
us under the impulse of which it seems easy to accom- 
plish the most heroic acts of penitence and self=denial, 
—a state indeed, of acute sensibility to religious im- 
pressions, which is destined in a short time to pass 
away and to be succeeded by a present dryness of 
spirit ; though one which if profited by, may be em- 
ployed with great benefit to the soul, but if neglected 
is liable to be followed with long seasons of apathy 
and indifference to vital religion. In both cases how- 
ever it is only by direct struggles to deepen our peni- 
tential feelings, while they are still vigorous in their 
first impressions, by actions which correspond with 
our sentiments ; it is only by persevering efforts to 
realize the corruption of our nature and its constant 
want of amendment ; it is only by encouraging fresh 
and gradual accessions of the grace, by " line upon 
line, and precept upon precept, here a little and 
there a little," that we can, in effect, attain unto a 
true and energetic spirit of penitence. 

Nor is the parable of the Prodigal Son, though 
doubtless intended to depict that intense degree of 
self-abandonment which should characterize the 
feelings of every true Penitent, to be advanced as 
in any way contravening this line of thought. The 
scriptural portraiture of repentance is, in such 
cases, to be regarded rather as representative of the 
whole Course of the penitential life, and as the habi- 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 319 

tual frame of mind belonging to the Christian peni- 
tent, than as the representation of the beginnings of 
a conversion to God. The obedience of the Prodi- 
gal is entire. It is utter self-renunciation, — a state 
of mind, be it observed, which however much the 
penitent may promise and even will to arrive at in the 
early periods of his conversion, is yet, in effect, then 
least of all in his power to attain to, but is perfected 
in him only by slow degrees and imperfect stages. 
That which appears, at first, a total surrender and an 
absolute humiliation, is often found by the really 
pious penitent to be more defective in humility and 
real devotion than he could have been formerly 
brought to suspect. When the excitement of the first 
outpourings of grace and the pleasures of the first 
spiritual joys have passed away, we find, to our 
surprise, that we have still evil hearts and unruly 
passions to subdue, and that our Almighty Father 
in heaven possesses our affections far less undivi- 
dedly than we had been willing, from the first 
ardour of our re-awakened devotion, to flatter our- 
selves was the case. So true indeed are these ob- 
servations, that it has been often remarked, that the 
greater advances the saint makes in holiness, the 
more surely does he realize the penitential spirit 
Hence we find the deep contrition of the holiest of 
men evincing itself in such expressions as the 
Psalmist gives vent to, " So foolish was I and igno- 
rant, even as a beast before Thee," and " As for me 
I am a worm and no man," or as S. Paul, when he 



320 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

calls himself " one born out of due time," and " the 
least of the Apostles, not meet to be called an 
Apostle," * and at a later period " the least of all 
saints," 2 and at a still later, his penitential feelings 
becoming more intense, " the chief of sinners." 3 

Thirdly, a further obvious reason why we should 
cultivate in our hearts the spirit of repentance, and 
regard ourselves in the light of penitents, is on the 
ground of that honour which the confession of our 
debasement and of our sinful estate is calculated to 
render to Almighty God. For if it should be urged 
by the less blameworthy Christian " Why am I con- 
signed to live the life of a penitent who have passed 
all my days in obedience to the laws and ordinances 
of God blameless?" let him well consider, that, 
at least he harbours within him a nature which, 
notwithstanding its regenerate state, is not yet 
wholly converted to God. So long therefore as any 
particle of that nature is clinging to him, as cling to 
him in this world it must, it should be made, in 
the whole character of that religion, which it calls 
to its aid, to confess the humiliating fact of the cor- 
ruption from which he has been released, and of that 
degree of corruption which still adheres to it and 
strives to overwhelm it. And this spirit every 
Christian man should the rather aim to give expres- 
sion to in his religion, lest in the glory of the pri- 
vileges to which his Christian rights have advanced 
him, he be too prone to forget the abyss of misery 

1 1 Cor. xv. 8, 9. 2 Ephes. iii. 8. 3 1 Tim. i. 15. 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 321 

from which God has by the death of His Blessed 
Son saved him. 

Let us then, my brethren, seriously take upon 
ourselves the yoke of our true mission in the Church 
of Christ. Let us embrace cheerfully this life of 
penitence to which the Gospel invites us. We 
should commit ourselves to it in the spirit and with 
the perseverance and true nobility of soul which re- 
sided in the Magdalene. And in thus setting before 
you, my brethren, her example, you may see at once 
I do not summon you to a mere life of gloominess 
and tears. Do not suppose that, in inviting you to 
entertain and follow out in all your ways and works 
the notion of penitence, I am endeavouring to 
impress upon you the necessity of bearing about the 
visible mark of a constant and overwhelming sense 
of your sinfulness, that you should " go heavily, 
your soul being vexed and disquieted within you," 
your " eyes being ever as a fountain of tears." 
Such was not, as we proved to you, the line of peni- 
tence pursued by Magdalene. When she anointed 
Christ the second time, her penitence had become 
a more confirmed habit of soul in her ; but the gush 
of tears — the natural attendant upon a state of mind 
as yet unsettled and surprised by the irruption of 
new feelings, these were not then observable in her. 
The more, then, we advance in perfecting the habit 
of repentance, the more we may look to see in all 
our actions in place of unnatural excitement and 
irregular fervour, the staid demeanour of assured re- 



322 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

solve. And agreeably with this, it has been said 
that " the frequent revolving our own errors, follies, 
and defects, the correcting and subduing our pas- 
sions and our appetites, all which is repentance, 
makes us wiser and honester, and so more prosper- 
ous in the eyes of men ; and a serious recollection 
of what we have done amiss towards other men and 
towards ourselves, is not out of the way to a repent- 
ance for having offended the Divine Providence. 
They who do believe (as the best men surely do) 
that there is no day of their life (from the time that 
they knew the difference between good and bad) in 
which they have not thought or said, or done some- 
what for which they need forgiveness from God and 
man, cannot doubt but that they have arguments 
for repentance every day ; and the oftener they make 
those resolutions the more cheerfully they live, and 
the more cheerfully they die." * 

Moreover, my brethren, if the Gospel be a gospel 
of repentance, it must not only demand the feeling 
of penitence in ourselves, but exact from us the ex- 
hibition of it in the mutual edification one of 
another. We have a mission of penitence among 
our brethren ; and I say to you, therefore, in the 
words of my Divine Master to Saint Peter, " When 
thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren ;" and 
again I address you in His words to Saint Mary 
Magdalene, "Go to My brethren, and say unto 
them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father : 

1 Lord Clarendon. Wordsworth's Christian Institutes, iii. 558. 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 323 

and to My God and your God." Tell them of My 
session on the throne of My Father ; and in so 
doing be for a sign and proof unto them, that I sit 
there to mediate for those who sigh and wail be- 
cause of their bondage under sin, and struggle to 
escape their prison. Stamped yourselves with 
the impress of Gospel repentance, go forth and 
strengthen your brethren. In yourselves habituate 
all beholders to its contemplation, and enable them 
the more readily to follow that difficult but lofty 
path of excellence to which you have committed 
your own hopes and subjected your own ways. 

To those in whom the sense of repeated declen- 
sions might seem to encourage despair, since they 
find themselves so often, though conscious of much 
sincerity towards God, renewing repentance ; let 
them take some degree of comfort and confidence 
from this encouraging thought— that, at least so 
long as they have the power to repent, so long are 
they in the way appointed for sinners. " That 
which God doth chiefly respect," says Hooker, 1 
" in men's penitency, is their hearts. The heart is 
it which maketh repentance sincere, sincerity that 
which findeth favour in God's sight, and the favour 
of God that which supplieth by gracious accept- 
ation whatever may seem defective in the faithful, 
hearty, and true offices of His servants. ' Take 
it,' saith Chrysostom, ' upon my credit, Such is 
God's manifest inclination towards men, that re- 
1 Hooker, Bk. VI. iii. 106. 
Y2 



324 THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT [SERM. 

pentance offered with a single and sincere mind He 
never refuseth ; no, not although we be come to the 
very top of iniquity. If there be a will and desire 
to return, He receiveth, embraceth, omitteth no- 
thing which may restore us to former happiness ; 
yea, that which is yet above all the rest, albeit we 
cannot in the duty of satisfying Him attain what we 
ought and would, but come far behind our mark, 
He taketh nevertheless in good worth that little 
which we do ; be it never so mean, we lose not our 
labour therein.' The least and lowest step of re- 
pentance in S. Chrysostom's judgment severeth 
and setteth us above them that perish in their sin. 
I will, therefore, end with S. Augustine's conclusion, 
' Lord, in Thy book and volume of Life all shall be 
written, as well the least of Thy Saints as the 
chiefest. Let not, therefore, the unperfect fear ; 
let them only proceed and go forward.' " 

Let them go forward. We echo the words. For 
they have a mission, and their faith in the mercies 
of Christ, shown in their persevering attachment to 
the Gospel, is ample argument with the many who 
have yet the work of penitence to begin and the 
Gospel to embrace. 

But to that man, whosoever he be, who is sensible 
of any disposition in himself to prize his attain- 
ments in virtue and righteousness and holiness 
above the meanest child of the Gospel, the most 
abject of its recent conquests, — who is conscious of 
indulging, in the least degree, a spirit of self- 



XVI.] IN THE CHURCH. 325 

satisfaction in his piety or his ample almsgiving, — 
nay, who does not positively feel a sense of worth- 
lessness in him which induces him to refrain from 
all comparison with every penitent, but newly 
drawn from the most loathsome sins ; — to such 
a man I have to say, remember the Gospel 
news of mercy is proclaimed to penitents, that 
Christ came not to call the righteous, even had 
there been any such. Oh, ye haughty ones, cast 
away from yourselves all proud thoughts. Come 
down from your high towers and your false confi- 
dences. Had ye done all that was demanded of 
you, ye had been but unprofitable servants ; but 
having so often sinned against the Majesty of the 
Eternal God, what choice have ye but to " hide ye 
in the dust for fear of the Lord ?" Hath He not 
said " The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and 
the haughtiness of man shall be bowed down, and 
the Lord alone shall be exalted ? " 1 

1 Isaiah ii. 10, 11. 



END OF THE SERMONS. 



APPENDIX. 



Page 2. 
" as of one who had ever lived an abandoned life." 

How very natural this sentiment is, may be seen in the 
effect it produced upon Origen, with whom, it may be said, the 
error of making more than one Mary originated. Bernard 
Lamy says, in his " Dissertatio de Unica Magdalena," 
"This opinion" (i.e. that the penitent woman of S. Luke, the 
sister of Lazarus, and Mary Magdalene, are but one person) 
" was first opposed by Origen ; because it seemed to him a very 
harsh conclusion to suppose that the woman ' a sinner,' — by 
which appellation he understood a public prostitute, — should 
eventually become the beloved hostess of Cheist." He then 
quotes Origen as follows : — " ' It is not credible that Mary, 
whom Jestjs loved, the sister of Martha, who had chosen the 
better part, should be called a woman in the city that was a 
sinner. And we think this because the woman who, accord- 
ing to Matthew and Mark, poured upon the head of Jesl~s a 
precious unguent, is nowhere written to have been a sinner. 
But she who, according to Luke, is spoken of as the sinner, 
did not dare to come to the head of Cheist, but washed His 
feet with her tears, as though scarcely even worthy of His 
very feet, by reason of her sorrow which was working a durable 
repentance unto salvation. And she who is spoken of by S. 
Luke weeps, and weeps abundantby, so as to wash the feet of 
Jestjs with her tears ; but the Mary of S. John is neither in- 
troduced as a sinner, nor as weeping.' " 

" Origen," * continues Lamy, "both by these reasonings and 

1 See, however, notes to pages 11 and 14. I think it is very important to 
observe, with respect to the testimony of the Fathers on this subject, that 
when S. Augustine comes professedly in his De Consensu Evangelistarum 
to harmonize the Gospels, he favours the view of but one Magdalene, whereas 
Chrysostom, Jerome, and Ambrose in intimating rather than asserting an op- 



328 APPENDIX. 

by his authority, led very many of the holy Fathers to recognise 
more than one Magdalene. So great was his authority, and in 
the interpretation of Holy Scripture he was considered so en- 
tirely to have carried off the palm from all other interpreters? 
that they who adhered to his interpretations ranked second to 
him." — Lamy. Dissertatio de Unica Magdalena. Appendix ad 
Comment, in Harm. Evang. pp. 650, 652. Parisiis. 1699. 

Page 3. 
" while viewing them separately." 

Bernard Lamy furnishes us with the following interesting 
history of the origin of the modern doubts as to the identity of 
the Magdalene with the penitent woman and Mary sister of 
Lazarus, wherein he acknowledges the temporary success 
which attended the publication of those doubts, but shows very 
convincingly that that success was owing rather to the unfor- 
tunate manner in which the dispute was conducted, and to the 
untenable grounds on which the ancient opinion was allowed 
to rest, than to any good claims to reception as the truth, 
which the view opposed to it possessed. 

"Whether the narrative of S. Luke, in his seventh chapter, 
concerning the woman that was a sinner ; and whether what 
he says in the eighth chapter concerning Mary Magdalene, out 
of whom our Lord had cast seven devils ; and lastly, whether 
what S. John in his tenth chapter and elsewhere attributes to 
Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus ; whether, I say, these 
three women here named are diverse not more in name than 
in person, or are one and the same woman, is a question of no 
less celebrity than obscurity ; and one which formerly caused 
a great diversity of opinion among the holy Fathers, and in 
these modern times among the greater part of the learned. 
Some of the ancient writers recognised three, some two, others 
only one Magdalene : and there were those whose minds were 
wont to fluctuate between the contending opinions. Nor must 
it be supposed that in entertaining these doubts they were 
guilty of any dangerous error. For as the faith would suffer 

posite opinion are directly weighing in their judgments the words of only one 
Gospel. But the value of the opinions of the Fathers will be found very ex- 
actly stated in the notes to page 18. 



APPENDIX. 329 

no detriment though the one opinion were assailed, so neither 
does it acquire confirmation if the other be defended. 

"Before the sixteenth century, divines and laymen, the learned 
and the unlearned, with voice and heart were wont to celebrate 
the praises of one and the same woman under the aforesaid 
three names, in singing those hymns and offices to the honour 
of S. Mary Magdalene which are to be found in the Roinan 
Breviary. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, James 
Le Fevre, of Etaples, published his view that the learned and 
the common people were in error ; and he asserted that the 
woman a sinner, Magdalene, and the sister of Lazarus were in 
reality different women. Josse Clichtove, Doctor of Divinity 
in the University of Paris, joined him in the publication of this 
opinion, who, in the year 1518, committed a second time to the 
press the work of Le Fevre, and again the year following, 1519, 
undertook the care of its revision, together with his first de- 
fence of it, which was repeated and maintained in answer to 
Marc Grandval, Canon of S. Victor, who, contending for a 
single Magdalene, had written with great warmth against 
Le Fevre. In this contest, the illustrious John Fisher Bishop 
of Rochester favoured the view of a single Magdalene, and 
wrote in support of the ancient and common opinion a work in 
three books, which was published at Paris in the year 1519. 

" From the writings which were then published in every 
quarter, we learn that the contention was sharp, and carried 
on by those who supported the view of a single Magdalene with 
as much warmth as if the Catholic Church herself were assailed, 
and her foundations endangered. On the ground that one 
Magdalene was the theme of the chants of the Church, and, 
that Gregory the Great, in his homilies which were read in 
the Church, did not recognise a plurality, they held their own 
opinion as an unquestionable verity confirmed by tradition. 
Therefore they inveighed against Le Fevre as an innovator. 
For at this time every novelty in teaching was by all Catholics 
regarded with especial distrust, on account of the strange doc- 
trines set forth by Luther, who had just before this started 
into notoriety. Moreover, Le Fevre was suspected on other 
grounds ; for he seemed to give countenance to heretics, a fact 
which the last days of his life make pretty clear, for he died at 



330 APPENDIX. 

Nerac, at the Court of Margaret, Queen of Navarre, who 
openly encouraged heresy. 1 He was the first man to revive, 
as it were, from the grave, the opinion of three Mag- 
dalenes ; for it had been, as we have seen, the opinion of 
certain of the ancient Fathers, but this had escaped the notice 
of almost all those who were accustomed to hear the hymns 
sung in the church in honour of Magdalene. They who had 
entertained the opinion that the women in question were 
diverse, were not wont to read Origen, Chrysostom, Ambrose, 
Jerome, and other writers ; they had only entertained doubts 
whether they could possibly be regarded as only one woman. 
And so Le Fevre was overcome both by the number and the 
authority of his opponents, when the matter was determined 
in the University of Paris by the larger number of votes, for his 
opinion was condemned by the University, and a prohibition was 
issued forbidding any one to defend that position for the future. 
" We find it far more agreeable to acquiesce in the opinions 
we have at first formed, than to undergo the labour of a re- 
newed investigation. Therefore the generality of men treat with 
contempt, and oppose any thing that is new to them, and at 
variance with their opinions. But forasmuch as novelty is 
universally attractive, and men are naturally desirous to learn 
that of which they have been hitherto ignorant, it not unfre- 
quently happens that the contempt and aversion first felt are 
finally displaced, by appreciation and attachment, whenever, 
from the new view, some further insight into a matter is ob- 
tained. Therefore the new opinion of Le Eevre, which at first 
was disdained and scouted, was received with more attention ; 
the judgment on which it was condemned was considered to 
rest on a false foundation : for it was well understood that, be- 
cause a thing was sung or said in the Church, it was not con- 
sequently of canonical obligation. Eor it very often happens 
that pious men, who are more eminent for holy motives than 
distinguished by clearness of intellect, compose hymns and 

1 The reader must not be offended with Lamy for using language common 
to nearly all Roman Catholics. Le Fevre, like Erasmus, Contarini, and other 
eminent men of the time, greatly aided by their writings the revival of letters 
and the general cause of reformation, but like them also died in the commu- 
nion of the Church of Rome. See Diet, de Morery. 



APPENDIX. 331 

canticles, which even the learned receive, provided only they 
gratify the devout vulgar, because it is necessary so to take 
advantage of the inclinations of the people, as to direct them 
to the praise and love of God. But as those canticles are not 
injurious to piety, for otherwise they would have been entirely 
rejected, so neither ought they to be prejudicial to the truth ; 
and since the holy Fathers are of authority among us only from 
their common consent, Le Fevre could not be condemned on 
the judgment of Gregory the Great alone. Besides, the autho- 
rity of the Fathers, even when they agree among themselves, 
is not absolute for the determination of every kind of question ; 
for in those points, which S. Augustine reckons to be ' beyond 
the faith,' every man has full liberty to hold that opinion which 
in his judgment, although a private one, appears to be most in 
accordance with the sacred volume. 

" As men are but too vehement, whichever side they take, so 
it happened, that that which had been accounted foolish and ir- 
religious in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was after- 
wards at the end of it, and throughout the whole of the follow- 
ing century, believed to be both rational and pious ; and she 
who had been accounted a single Magdalene, was, everywhere 
among learned men, divided into many. This opinion it was 
lawful even to defend publicly in the Sorbonne : provided that 
a trifling distinction was employed, so that the old decree 
should not be violated in words, however much it might be in 
reality. For example, those who afterwards defended Le 
Fevre's opinion that there was one Magdalene, said that they 
did not assert that there were three Magdalenes (which was the 
opinion condemned,) but that there were three different wo- 
men, of which one was named Magdalene. Nay, the matter 
came to that pass as the present century was drawing to a 
close, that it would have shocked a learned man to entertain 
the same opinions with the common people who sang on the 
festival of Magdalene. Therefore, since this had become the 
prevailing opinion, those who endeavoured to restore the Pari- 
sian Breviary to a better form, as also the correctors of the 
Orleans and Vienne Breviaries in Dauphiny (openly distin- 
guishing Mary sister of Lazarus, both from the woman a 
sinner, and from Magdalene who was possessed with seven 



332 APPENDIX. 

devils) changed the hymns and the offices which were accus- 
tomed to be sung on the festival of S. Mary Magdalene. But 
very many who did not use the said Breviaries, read indeed, 
and sang in the Roman Breviary the old office of the Magda- 
lene ; but, lest they should seem to be wanting in learning, 
boasted that they had laid aside the ancient opinion ; which 
therefore was almost universally exploded, until I applied my- 
self to effect its revival. Before I put forth new arguments, I 
shall again say, that each man may use his own judgment in 
such like questions, ' Scimus et hanc veniam petimusque damus- 
que vicissim,' provided that this liberty do not degenerate into 
licence ; that is, that it be not injurious, even in the least de- 
gree, to good morals or sound faith." — Lamy. Appendix, 636, 
637, 638. See note infra for the English history of this con- 
troversy. 

Page 6. 
"how statements so very diverse," &c. 

Dr. Bloomfield says, (Gk. Test, in loc.) " Some ancient and 
most early modern commentators, Lightfoot and Grrotius espe- 
cially, maintain it. For the contrary view are Theophylact and 
Euthymius (from Chrysostom) ; and many of the best modern 
commentators, as Buxtorf, Hammond, "Whitby, Wolf, Markland, 
Michaelis, Hosenmuller, Kuinoel, Deyling, and Lampe." "The 
points," he continues, " of dissimilarity between the two narra- 
tions are striking" It is true, he also says, that "the dissimi- 
larity between the penitent woman and Mary Magdalene" is as 
great ; but in what particulars this dissimilarity is visible which 
cannot be accounted for on the simple grounds of change of time 
and circumstance, I cannot conceive. See the text, pp. 14 and 
15. The coherency of the view of their oneness, no inconsider- 
able argument in itself, is exhibited in the Sermons passim. 

Page 7. 
" the account as it stands in S. Luke." 

If it be urged that the method of S. Luke's chronological 
arrangement will account for this difference of place, then I 
must contend that a good reason for its position, in harmony 



APPENDIX. 333 

with that method, should be assigned. I am not aware of any 
classification of events, 1 which the Evangelist is here pursuing, 
which would make it necessary for him to deviate from the 
chronological order. 

With those persons to whom the place of this transaction, as 
believed to be some town in Gralilee, as Nain or Capernaum, 
would be a reason for rejecting the identity of the penitent wo- 
man with the Mary of Bethany, on the authority of Whitby? 
the following considerations, extracted from Lamy, may have 
some weight. 

" Luke has subjoined this history of the woman a sinner, 
who washed the feet of our Lobd, to the mission of the disciples 
of John the Baptist. John had sent them to Jesus from Judea 
to Gralilee ; from which place, when the Passover was at hand, 
Jesus, Who was present at this feast, set out for Jerusalem. 
The events in the narration of the woman in the city who was 
a sinner took place in this city or in its neighbourhood. For 
in the sacred volume and in the books of the Jews no other 
place is simply called ' the city.' In this manner is Jerusalem 
called, in the ancient cycles of the Hebrews, ' the holy city,' as 
Ho ine was called the city (urbs) among the Latins. " — Comment, 
in Harm. 201, 202. 

Page 10. 

" did so some time before." 

Bloomfield, contra, thinks that ij aXei'yJsaaa is said by anticipa- 
tion for "who (afterwards) anointed." " The figure," he says, 
" is not unusual where the action (as here) speedily followed, 
and is well known." But if the natural reading can be preserved, 
and this may be done on the supposition of two actions, it is 
surely preferable to a plan of interpretation which, after all, is 
only an expedient for accounting for a supposed difficulty, 
arising out of the presumption of a single action. The idea 
that if aXeiyfraffa is said by anticipation is purely gratuitous, if a 
good interpretation is suggested, accounting for the passage in 
a natural way. 

1 See Bloomfield, Gk. Test., Pref. to S. Luke. 



334 APPENDIX. 

Page 11. 
" a special characteristic of Mary sister of Lazarus." 

This view was derived from perusal of the following passage : 
" The histories of S. Matthew and S, Mark have, in common with 
that of S. Luke, the mention of the ' woman with the alabaster 
box of ointment,' and that the anointing takes place in the 
house of one ' Simon ; ' the history in S. John has, in common 
with S. Luke, ' the anointing of the feet of Jesus, and then 
wiping them with the hair of the head ; ' and these two circum- 
stances S. John mentions (xi. 2.) as characteristic of ' Mary.' 
Yet they would not be characteristic of her had they been done 
by another, also (as is supposed by those who distinguish Mary 
Magdalene 1 from Mary the sister of Lazarus) of a very different 
character." — Sermons on Solemn Subjects, 1845 ; note on first 
Sermon. 

Page 11. 
" is sufficient to recommend it as the true one." 

The following passage is corroborative of what I have said : 
" Any one who should read the history of the three anointings 
of our Blessed Lord, without any knowledge that any difficulty 
had been raised as to the sacred narrative, would probably look 
upon them as the act of the same person. And this is in fact 
the earliest impression which we find with regard to them ; for 
Origen, in alleging grounds against it, speaks of it as the opi- 
nion of ' many,' or of ' the many, ' apparently the current 
opinion of his time. He mentions, also, as the common ground 
of those who so understood the history, apparently the ' na- 
turalness ' of so taking it." — Sermons on Solemn Subjects, 
1845 ; note on Sermon I. See also note to page 14. 

Page 12. 

" and wiping them with her hair." 

Does not S. John, by this marked revival of the memory of 
an act omitted in the accounts of SS. Matthew and Mark, 
and by, as it would seem, a designed omission of what they 

1 The writer is here taking it for granted that Mary Magdalene is the same 
with the penitent woman of the city. 



APPENDIX. 335 

thought worthy of special mention, as the proof of her renewed 
life, and perfect acceptance with her Loed, rather encourage 
the impression which obtains concerning S. Mary Magdalene, 
that she devoted herself to a perpetual penitence ? 

Thus we are told that " Magdaleine qui n'avoit plus rien de 
cher au monde apres la Personne Sacre'e de jEsrs Cheist, 
s'ensevelit toute vivante dans une grotte pour le reste de ses 
jours, oii elle acheva de consommer le sacrifice de sa penitence." 
— Cheminais, Sermons, 1. 72. 5me edit. 1710. 

"All her whole life, and every year unto the death of Cheist, 
she dedicated to penitence, and spent a life of austerity for 
thirty years in a desert in continual tears, fasts, and prayers. 
Read her life in Surras on the 22nd July." — Corn, a Lap. in 
locum. 2nd col. B. 

The " grotto" and the '-'thirty years in the desert," we may 
perhaps look upon as the effect of mere embellishment and the 
uncertainty of tradition : but they may likewise with some safety 
be regarded as the rough exterior in which the general peni- 
tential character of her life has been preserved to posterity. The 
object of this note will be more clearly seen in the 16th Sermon. 

Pages 12 and 14. 

" who from whatever causes were out of the pale of the Jewish 
church" — "would not merely have been excommunicated." 

Eloomfield says, " When commentators assign to the word the 
sense harlot or adulteress, they adduce no proof of that signi- 
fication from the classical writers. Nor is it necessary to sup- 
pose any such particularity. There is no reason why it may 
not be taken in the general sense of a vicious person. Thus we 
are enabled to get rid of the harshness of taking 5 in a plu- 
perfect tense (very rarely met with) which all the commen- 
tators do who assign to a/nap7iv\b<z the signification harlot. 
The woman, it seems, was then a sinner : however, a sinner 
under conviction of sin, and having the sincere desire of 
amendment." — Eloomfield' s Greek Testament, in loc. 

Again, from Bernard Lamy we translate the following : — 
" We must observe that by this name of ' sinner,' a vile harlot 
is not always signified. AH those who did not observe every 



336 APPENDIX. 

precept of the law with a due religious observance were called 
sinners. There is no doubt that this 'woman that was a 
sinner,' of whom S. Luke speaks, was not a harlot. For she 
was a Jewish woman of the town of Bethany. She could not, 
therefore, practise the trade of a prostitute with impunity. 
1 There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel.' Thus 
GrOD commanded in the 23rd chapter of Deuteronomy. And 
this law was in force in these very times ; for Philo witnesses to 
the fact, that harlots were stoned, as it were a pestilence and 
a calamity and a public blot. And to this custom Josephus 
also affords his testimony, in the book concerning his own life. 
The zeal, too, with which the Jews pressed for our Loed's con- 
demnation, in the case of the woman taken in adultery, shows 
that the Mosaic laws were not yet neglected. If any one could 
prove this woman a sinner of whom we are speaking to have been 
a foreigner, I confess that no punishment for her fornications 
would have been imposed upon her ; but would Simon a Pha- 
risee have allowed a harlot to penetrate into his house, and to 
serve among his handmaidens, and wash the feet of Jesus his 
guest?" — Comment, in Harm. 202. 

Page 14. 

"And although in the Eastern Church," &c, 

However, the important fact should not be forgotten, that 
" in the time of Origen, it was the opinion of the many, not to 
say of all, that there was but one Magdalene ; as Origen him- 
self declares in his 35th tractate upon Matthew, in treating 
upon the supper at Bethany, in which Mary anointed the feet 
of the Loed. By the instance of this Mary, he touches upon 
the question which we are agitating, concerning which he speaks 
thus : — ' Many indeed think, that the four Evangelists have 
treated of one and the same woman, &c.' What is meant by 
that, ' many indeed think,' unless it was the common opinion 
that Magdalene was one person ? The sacred volume did not 
thrust upon us this opinion, but made it manifest to those 
only who sought it out. Eor, she whom Luke, in the 
eighth chapter calls Magdalene, he does not clearly say that she 
is the woman a sinner, concerning whom he speaks in the 



APPENDIX. 337 

seventh chapter : — he does not signify this, but rather conceals 
it ; and when in the tenth chapter he speaks of Mary sister of 
Martha, he does not call her the sinner, nor does he say that 
she was formerly possessed of seven devils. Under these circum- 
stances, if it should be pointed out to the minds of all or of the 
many that these women were not diverse, without doubt they 
had received this from ancient tradition, which at that time 
could have been none other than that of Apostolic men." — 
Lamy, Appendix ad Comment, in Harm. 650. 

The following passage from the valuable note at the end of 
Sermons on Solemn Subjects, from which we have already 
quoted, is important as containing a harmonized statement of 
the views of the Fathers on this interesting question, and is 
quite sufficient to prove that the advocates of a triple Magdalene 
have little to aid their cause in the support of the Fathers, and 
to show that those who support an opposite view have too 
rashly allowed themselves to claim the sanction of some great 
names to a view which has but a very indifferent right to it. 

" For all are agreed now, that the history in S. Matthew 
(c. xxvi.), S. Mark (c. xiv.), and S. John (c. xii.) are the same ; 
but of these S. Matthew and S. Mark relate the anointing the 
Head of our Loed only, S. John that of the Feet. But S. John 
relates the anointing of the Feet, as the characteristic of Mary, 
(c. xi. and xii.). This it is, of course, very remarkably, if this 
was the action of faith and humility, upon which she received 
her pardon. S. Matthew and S. Mark would thus relate that 
part of the anointing, winch signified the nearness with which 
she was allowed to approach our Loed, and His gracious accept- 
ance and favour towards her, in that she was permitted to 
anoint His Sacred Head ; S. John records that part of the ac- 
tion which betokened her continued humility, which he had 
before spoken of. Each part of the action had, thus, its special 
meaning. And so there is not even the appearance of contra- 
diction in them, but rather an inward harmony amid the out- 
ward variation which strikes every one on the first reading, that 
S. Matthew and S. Mark, relating the same anointing with S. 
John, mention the anointing of the Head only, S. John of the 
Feet only. This explanation is given by S. Ambrose (ad loc.) 
in relation to the difficulty ; his first impression being, that it 

z 



338 APPENDIX. 

is the same person. ' This woman, then, S. Matthew mentions 
pouring ointment on the Head of Cheist, and perhaps on that 
ground would not call her a sinner ; for the sinner, according 
to Luke, poured ointment on the Eeet of Cheist. She may, 
then, not be the same ; lest the Evangelists seem to relate 
things contrary. The question, however, may be solved by the 
difference of advancement and of time, in that, in the one 
case, she was yet a sinner, in the other, more perfect.' S. 
Augustine has exactly the same view ; ' that it was not another 
woman, who, a sinner, then approached the Feet of Jestts and 
kissed them and washed them with tears, and anointed with 
ointment, to whom the Loed, using the parable of the two 
debtors, said, ' her many sins were forgiven because she loved 
much ;' but that the same Mary did this twice, once namely 
which Luke related, when first approaching with that humility 
and those tears, she obtained remission of sins. For this John 
also, although he does not, as Luke, relate it as it happened, 
mentions, in praise of Mary, when he had begun to speak of the 
raising of Lazarus, before He came to Bethany : ' Now a cer- 
tain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of 
Mary and her sister Martha. It was that Mary which, &c.' 
In saying this John accords with Luke, who relates that it took 
place in the house of one Simon, a Pharisee. This then Mary 
had already done. But what she did again in Bethany is 
different, not belonging to the relation in Luke, but related 
alike by the three, John namely, Matthew, and Mark. Of 
these there is no doubt that they relate the same act,' &c. 
(de Cons. Ev. ii. 79.) And certainly S. John's words, 'It was 
that Mary which anointed &c. whose brother Lazarus was 
sick,' are much more naturally interpreted of a previous than 
of a subsequent action ; of an act which S. John was not going 
to relate, and which would not otherwise be known to belong to 
this Mary, than of one which he was ; as giving us an intima- 
tion of some previous relation in which she had been brought to 
our Loed, rather than an anticipation of an act which, in 
a manner, flowed out of this very history of the raising of 
Lazarus. 

" On the other hand, the very Eathers who suppose the 
women who anointed our Loed to have been different, illustrate 



APPENDIX. 339 

incidentally their sameness. As Origen owns, ' There is a great 
likeness and sort of affinity as to this woman in the four Evan- 
gelists.' (Tract 35 in S. Matt. § 77, Lat.) Thns, although 
in this place Origen says, that there must have been three, dis- 
tinguishing that in S. Matthew and S. Mark from that in S. 
John, as well as from S. Luke ; yet, elsewhere, he distinguishes 
two only, ' the sinner who poured the ointment upon the Feet, 
and her who is not called a sinner, who poured it on His 
Head.' (Tract 1. in Cant.) And again (Tract 2. in Cant.) he 
expressly identifies the woman ' not a sinner' in S. Matthew, 
S. Mark, and S. John, distinguishing S. Luke only ; but in yet 
another place (in Matt. torn. xii. § 4) he speaks of the sinner, 
in connection with ' Simon the leper,' thus identifying the 
history in S. Luke with that in S. Matthew and S. Mark. 
S. Chrysostom says, (Horn. 80 in S. Matt.) that ' it appears' to 
be the same person in all four gospels ; he thinks not ; but 
still identifies the person mentioned in S. Matthew, S. Mark, 
and S. Luke, as distinct from her in S. John. Thus even 
Origen and S. Chrysostom, while they distinguish the history 
of S. Luke and S. John, together identify them with the same 
third history. S. Jerome (in S. Matt.) adopting (as it seems) 
the remark of Origen, inserts a word, which seems to imply 
that he (as does S. Ambrose above,) thought that the two his- 
tories might belong to the same person at different times. 
* Let no one think that it is the same who poured the ointment 
upon the Head and upon the Feet. For that one both washes 
with tears, and wipes with the hair, and is explicitly called a 
sinful woman (meretrix.) But of this one nothing of this 
kind is written. Neither could a sinner of that sort (meretrix) 
at once, become worthy to minister at the Head of our Lokd.' 
" On the whole, then, the identity of the individual who 
anointed our Loed, seems to follow from the most natural ex- 
planation of S. John xi 2, to have recommended itself to the 
mind of simple Christians, and unless it be supposed (which is 
the opinion of Origen only, and very improbable) that there 
were three acts of anointing, or three women who anointed our 
Lord, the narratives of S. Matthew and S. Mark are harmonized 
most naturally with that of S. John (c. xii.) on the supposition 
that the anointing related by S. Luke was a distinct act of the 

z 2 



340 APPENDIX. 

same individual. This opinion, which appears (as was said) 
to have been the most common before Origen, is adopted in 
several places by S. Gregory the Great from S. Augustine, and, 
partly perhaps from its naturalness, partly from having been 
received in the Roman Breviary, has been prevalent in the 
Western Church." 

Page 17. 
" and yet in both it was combined with a most active energy." 

If after all that has been said, any one should be disposed to 
object to the oneness of Mary and Magdalene, that in the tenth 
chapter of S. Luke we find Mary, sister of Lazarus, spoken of 
as altogether a new character introduced by the Evangelist into 
his Grospel in the words " and she had a sister called Mary," 
whereas if she were the same person as that mentioned in the 
seventh and eighth chapters, allusion would be certainly made 
to the fact ; let the reader be reminded that we have already 
in the text, at page 15, shown that this is not a safe conclusion, 
with such writings as the Holy Scriptures. Certainly we can- 
not dispose of the similar difficulty to the oneness of the peni- 
tent with Mary Magdalene, in the seventh and eighth chapters, 
and yet allow this to be a stumbling-block to us. For after 
speaking of the penitent he says immediately, as though she 
were not connected with Magdalene, " Mary, called Magdalene, 
out of whom," &c. 

Lamy says on this point : "S. Luke, at the end of chapter 10, 
speaks in express words concerning Martha and Mary her sis- 
ter. I own that it appears very strange that the Evangelist 
(if our opinion is the true one) when treating of one and the 
same person, should describe her by different names and cir- 
cumstances ; speaking no otherwise in chapters 7, 8, and 10, 
than as though he would enumerate three distinct women. He 
simply calls her the woman a sinner, in the seventh chapter, 
whom he calls Mary Magdalene in the eighth chapter, and re- 
presents her who was formerly possessed by seven devils as 
following Jesus and ministering to Him ; with whom in the 
whole tenor of her life the sister of Martha, of whom he speaks 
in chapter 10, seems to have nothing in common. But this dif- 
ficulty is no great one, if the Evangelist was willing to consult 



APPENDIX. 341 

the feeling of shame and the honour of the sisters. Perhaps 
they were still living when he wrote. Therefore he did not 
name Mary, when she was to be called a sinner, and formerly 
full of devils. But in reality he does not represent different 
women. Eor such as he describes Mary the sister, such is the 
character of the woman a sinner, and Magdalene ; she wholly 
clings to her Beloved and cannot be drawn from the sight of 
Him. Calm and tranquil she sits at His feet ; by which circum- 
stance I think that the Magdalene formerly possessed by devils 
is indicated by the Evangelist. For in that which Luke says, 
' sitting at the feet of the Lord she heard His Word,' he seems 
to signify that Mary was then entirely free from devils. Thus 
he himself speaking of that man from whom the Lord had cast 
a legion of devils, at chapter 8, ' Then came,' he says, ' to 
Jesus,' inhabitants of the city into whose swine the demons had 
entered, and ' they found the man out of whom the devils had de- 
parted, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and inhis right mind.' " 

Page 23. 

" were now all severally made to render tribute in her offer- 
ings to Christ." 

How natural is this interpretation may be seen in the uni- 
form manner in which it has been adopted. 

S. Gregory, Horn. 33, quoted by Corn, a Lap. in Lucam, cap. 7, 
v. 36, says, " That which she had spent with shame upon herself, 
she now with praiseworthiness offered to God. With her eyes she 
had sought earthly things : but ill-using them now in penitence, 
she was weeping. She had arranged her hair for the adornment of 
her face, but now she was wiping her tears away with her hair. 
She had spoken with haughty lips ; but kissing the feet of the 
Lord, she now fastened them on the footsteps of her Redeemer ; 
therefore she found according to the number of her attractions 
the means of so many sacrifices. She turns to the number of 
her virtues the number of her sins, that everything in her might 
serve God in her repentance that in her sinfulness had despised 
God." S. Cyprian and S. Euthymius speak to the same effect. 

In like manner Cheminais, Sermons: "Elle veut expier 
par de saints baisers les libertes qu'elle a prises autrefois : 



342 APPENDIX. 

elle repand avec profusion lesparfums dontelle faisoit unmau- 
vais usage ; rienn'a servi dans elle au peche', qui ne devienne un 
instrument de penitence." See also Lamy in the next note : also, 
" She now defaces # * whatever had formerly been an instru- 
ment of sin ; her eyes which had been full of dangerous charms, 
are now converted into fountains of tears to cleanse the stains 
of her soul ; and her hair once dressed in tresses and curls to 
ensnare souls, now hangs loose and dishevelled, and serves for 
a towel to wipe our Lord's feet, which she kisses with her 
lips and scents with her perfumes, formerly the incentives to 
vice." — Butler's Life of S. Mary Magdalene. 



Page 25. 

"that an extreme vanity compelled her to indulge in." 

" Magdalene is a Hebrew name, by which is signified a woman 
who plaits her hair. On the Sabbath it was not lawful to plait 
the hair ; and so the woman a sinner could be called Magdalene 
because she spent too much care each day in plaiting her hair : 
and otherwise by a soft luxurious kind of life, she made it ap- 
parent that she did not make much account of the law, there- 
fore called a sinner. It is worthy of notice that the Evangelists 
carefully mark that she wiped the feet of our Lord with her 
hair. To wit, that they might show how much she had changed 
her first method of life who converted into those uses her hair 
which before was her principal thought." — Lamy, 202. 

The name Magdalene has indeed been by some derived from 
Magdala, since " Josephus in the book of his life speaks of 
(ppovpwv, a citadel overagainst the sea or lake of Tiberias, near 
G-amala, and which citadel was called Magdala:" (Lamy) and 
this has been made the foundation of a doubt as to the sameness 
of Mary sister of Martha with Magdalene, since the one would 
be of Magdala in Gralilee, the other of Bethany. 

"But although," says Lamy, " certain parts of Gralilee were 
called Magdala, it is not a necessary consequence that Magdalene 
should derive her name from these places. Besides, Magdala 
seems to have been nothing else than a, fort (ifipovpiov), as it is 
called by Josephus, — a fort which was occupied by soldiers, and 



APPENDIX. 343 

had no other inhabitants. In short, it was a tower, Migdal 
is the Hebrew word for a tower, whence the Syriac name Mag- 
dala." Then alluding to his comment above, he says, 

" A more probable etymology of the name of Magdalene we 
have assigned in our Commentary ; and we at the same time 
proposed a by no means improbable conjecture why Mary was 
called by this name ; by which name also the Evangelist called 
her, wishing to intimate that that Mary concerning whom 
in his eighth chapter he was speaking, was the very woman a 
sinner who first changing her plan of life, with those very 
hairs on which she had formerly spent so much care, had wiped 
the feet of the Lord. For in the books of the Hebrews, Mag- 
dala or Megaddela, signifies a woman who plaits the hair of 
women, from the verb gaddel, which is to twist, whence ghedila, 
i. e. a twisted rope. Because, therefore, Mary had formerly with 
too much care arranged her hair she was thus named Magda- 
lene ; a circumstance which had preserved the name among 
Christians, because from the time the Lord had become known 
to her, she had turned her hair to other uses. 

" From the same name we may conjecture that formerly Mary 
had not been sufficiently exact in keeping the law of the Sabbath, 
because even on the Sabbath days she would arrange her hair. 
For among the works prohibited on the Sabbath by the Jews 
this is accounted one ; as may be seen in a tractate concerning 
the Sabbath, cap. 10, num. 6. ' "Whosoever shortens his nails, 
one with another, or with his teeth ; or cuts his hair, or the hair 
of his upper lip, or his beard ; also whosoever braids her hair — 
haghodeleth, whosover paints herself, whosoever parts her hair, 
all these E,. Elieser indeed pronounces criminal ; but the wise 
forbid these practices more surely from the Sabbatical statute.' 

" Therefore Mary may have been called Magdalene because 
she braided her hair even on the Sabbath days, lightly regard- 
ing the Sabbatical statutes, as well as many other things of this 
kind ; on which account she was called sinner. And this the 
Evangelist leaves us to think, when he says that out of her 
went seven devils. For as says S. Gregory, she had seven de- 
vils who was filled with all vices. Notwithstanding seven or 
more devils truly possessed her, although it is certain, that after 
the manner of speaking among the Hebrews, vices were called 



344 APPENDIX. 

devils : however by this observation, that Mary formerly had se- 
ven devils, it was sufficiently indicated that her life had not passed 
without blame, and was not subjected to all the commands of 
the law. For at that time they who withdrew their neck from 
the yoke of the law were sometimes surrendered to the power 
of the devil." — Lamy, Appendix, 643 — 4. 

Page 26. 
" Great, surely, must have been that moral obliquity." 

On the passage " Out of whom went seven devils," Corn, a 
Lapide comments thus : " Seven devils ; that is, Christ had ex- 
pelled the seven capital vices, i.e. pride, avarice, gluttony, 
luxury, anger, envy, and sloth, says Bede and Theoph. on this 
place, and S. Greg. Horn. 33. This is said truly but must be 
taken mystice. For here true devils are literally to be under- 
stood, for these are malignant spirits, as a little before he has 
said, and these properly are said ' to go out,' and as Mark 
says, ' to be cast out.' So S. Ambrose, Euthym. Jansen. and 
others, on this place. Magdalene, therefore, on account of her 
wickedness, seems to have been possessed by seven devils, and, 
when set free from them, among other demoniacs, by Cheist, 
to have repented of her sins, and having obtained her pardon, 
to have adhered to Him inseparably ; now no longer possessed 
by a devil but by God, and made a temple of the Holt Ghost." 
So Bishop Fisher, Jansenius, and others. Lamy also, as we 
have seen in the preceding note was of the same opinion as to 
the reality of the possession, &c. 

Page 27. 
" extends His compassion towards her and looses her bonds." 

So Alban Butler likewise represents the release from de- 
moniacal possession as preceding her interview with our Sa- 
viour in the Pharisee's house. " His bowels had yearned over 
her spiritual miseries, and He spread upon her soul a beam 
of His divine light, which penetrated her understanding and 
her heart so effectually, that, listening to the interior voice of 
His grace, she saw the abominable filth and miseries in which 



APPENDIX. 345 

she was plunged, was filled with confusion and horror, and 
conceived the most sincere detestation of her ingratitude and 
baseness. Our Lord went to the banquet in great joy to wait 
for this soul, which He Himsele had secretly ivounded with 
His holy love, and which He was pleased to draw to Him in the 
midst of a great assembly, that by her public repentance she 
might repair the scandal she had given, and He might give to 
all succeeding ages an illustrious instance of His mercy towards 
all repenting sinners." 

And in the Sermons on Solemn Subjects the preventing grace 
of Cheist afforded to Magdalene is declared in these strong 
terms. " Such then was she, all fair without, within all decayed; 
nothing without to impel her to penitence ; nothing within (of 
which we know) to draw her ; in the mastery of Satan, and 
possessed by seven devils. Nothing was there within, except 
that which alone is of avail, the constraining grace of Cheist. 
He Who made her, saw in this her hopeless state, the capacity 
of penitence, and, at once, re-made her. By what look, what 
words, we know not ; on what outward occasion, or by what in- 
ward drawings. She stands before us the more as a model of 
all penitents, in that of the special history of her conversion we 
are told nothing ." 

Page 30. 

" Such was the frequency of cases of this kind." 

Indeed so numerous were they that it was found necessary 
to make canons providing against the admission into holy orders 
of persons possessed, and for their removal from their functions 
when they had obtained orders. 

" The reader may find several other cautions given by Gren- 
nadius against ordaining any who had been actors or stage 
players, or energumens during the time of their being possessed." 
— Bingham, vol. iv. ch. iv. § 7. 

"If any such by any chance or mistake were ordained, he was 
immediately to be deposed. This is very expressly decreed in 
the first Council of Orange. Energumens are not only not to 
be taken into any order of the clergy, but those who are already 
ordained shall be removed from their offi.ce also." — Bingham, 
vol. xvii. ch. v. § 3. 



346 



APPENDIX 



Page 30. 



" so definite a position did they occupy in the cares of the 
Church." 

The care of the Church was remarkably shown in the ques- 
tion whether the energumen in cases of extremity was to be 
baptized. 

" The Council of Eliberis orders them to be deferred till they 
were set free and cured ; but yet in case of extremity, and visi- 
ble appearance of death, appoints them to be baptized. The 
first Council of Orange seems to have allowed it not only in 
absolute necessity, but in the remissions and intervals of their 
distemper ; for it orders, ' that such catechumens as were pos- 
sessed should be baptized, according as their necessity required 
or opportunity permitted.' In the Canons of Timothy, bishop 
of Alexandria, the same question is put, but resolved a little 
differently : ' If baptism be desired for a catechumen that is 
possessed, what shall be done ? ' To which the answer is, 
' Let him be baptized at the hour of death, and not otherwise.' 
So likewise, in the Constitutions under the name of the Apos- 
tles : ' If any one is possessed with a devil, let him be taught 
the principles of piety, but not be received to communion till 
he is cleansed. Yet, if he be under the pressure of imminent 
death, let him be received.' And this was the ancient rule in 
the time of Cyprian, who says, ' that they who were possessed 
with unclean spirits, were baptized in time of sickness ; and 
many times this benefit followed from it, that though some of 
those, for want of faith, were still vexed with unclean spirits ; 
the true energy of baptism, which was to deliver men from the 
power of the devil, failing in some by their own default and 
weakness of faith ; yet, in others, it was found true, by expe- 
rience, that they who were baptized in time of sickness and 
urgent necessity, were thereby delivered from the unclean 
spirit with which they were before possessed ; and thencefor- 
ward lived a very laudable and reputable life in the Church, 
and made a daily proficiency and increase in heavenly grace 
by the augmentation of their faith. And on the contrary, it 
oftentimes happened, that some of those who were baptized in 
health, when they afterward fell into sin, were tormented with 



APPENDIX. 347 

the unclean spirit returning upon them ; whence it was appa- 
rent that the devil was excluded in baptism by the faith of the 
believer, but if afterward his faith failed, the devil returned to 
his old possession.' From this discourse of Cyprian we learn 
not only that energumens, in time of extremity, were admitted 
to baptism ; but that baptism, in such cases was many times a 
peculiar benefit to them, whilst it delivered them from the pos- 
session of unclean spirits, which could not be before cast out 
by any power of the exorcists, though in those days the power 
of exorcism was a miraculous gift of the Holt Gthost." — 
Bingham, b. xi. c. 5, § 3. 

Page 30. 
" was used for them." 

For proof that a particular division of the sacred edifice was 
allotted to the energumens I refer the reader to Bingham, b. iii. 
c. 4, § 6. 

I also refer the reader to Bingham, b. xiv. c. 5, § 7, for the 
statement that a special ceremony of intercession was used for 
them in very pitiable cases by the general congregation. The 
reader should also consult the same learned author, b.iii. c. 4, 
§§ 6 & 7, in respect to the office of the exorcist. All the sections 
of the chapter are well worth perusal in connection with the 
subject. — Bingham, b. viii. 4, vol. iii. p. 183. 

Page 31. 

"In the rituals of the eastern, and of that portion of the 
western Church." 

The following passages are very curious ; but scarcely in ac- 
cordance with our more sober predilections in ritual matters. 

" L'exorciste, qui doit etre prepare par le jeune, par la priere 
et par la confession, commence par implorer secretement l'assis- 
tance du ciel. Bevetu d'un surplis et d'une etole violette, s'il 
est pretre ou diacre, et suivi d'un ou plusieurs ecclesiastiques 
aussi en surplis, il s'avance vers le bas de l'eglise ou doit se 
faire la ceremonie. La, s'approchant du possede, il lui met au- 
tour du cou le bout de son etole, et fait sur lui le signe de la 
croix, puis sur soi et sur les assistans. II prend ensuite Fas- 



348 APPENDIX. 

persoir des mains d'un clerc, et jette de l'eau benite au possede 
et a ceux qui sont presens. Alors il se met a genoux, et com- 
mence les prieres prescrites par l'Eglise, les assistans ayant 
soin d'y repondre. Ces prieres consistent dans les Litanies des 
Saints, l'oraison dominicale, le Psaume 53, avec plusieurs ver- 
sets. Le pretre, s'etant leve, adresse une invocation au Tout- 
Puissant, et conjure ensuite le malin esprit, par nos plus re- 
doutables mysteres, de lui dire son nom, le jour et l'heure de 
sa sortie du corps qu'il obsede, et de lui obeir en toutes cboses. 
II lit ensuite un ou plusieurs evangiles, faisant au commence- 
ment de chacun le signe de la croix sur lui-meme et sur le pos- 
sede. Ensuite il demande a Dief, par une priere ou oraison 
propre, la foi, la force et le pouvoir necessaires pour chasser 
1'ennemi du salut. Lorsqu'elle est achevee, il entoure d'une 
partie de son etole le cou du possede, fait une autre invocation ; 
et, la tete couverte de son bonnet, qu'il ote seulement au nom 
de Jesus, il pronounce trois exorcismes qui sont des conjurations 
menacantes, mele'es de signes de croix, et suivies chacune d'une 
priere au Createur. Quelquefois il repete ces memes cboses, 
s'il en est besoin, jusqu'a ce que le possede soit delivre." — Art. 
Exorcisme, Diet, des Cultes. Versailles. 1820. 

" Voici quelles sont les ceremonies de l'exorcisme dans l'Eglise 
grecque, au rapport de Christophe Angelus, temoin oculaire. 
'Le possede est d'abord attache a un poteau; puis des pretres, 
qui se sont prepares a cette action par un jeune de vingt-qua- 
tre heures, viennent lire devant lui l'Evangile. lis lisent cbaque 
jour pendant six heures, jusqu'a ce qu'ils aient acbeve les qua- 
tre Evangiles. lis se remplacent les uns les autres dans cette 
lecture, mais sans aucune interruption ; de sorte que l'un re- 
prend le dernier mot de 1' autre. Un pretre, recommandable 
par la saintete de sa vie, lit ensuite les exorcismes compose's par 
S. Basile, et commande au diable de sortir du corps dont il s'est 
empare. Le malin esprit obeit, malgre lui, a cet ordre, et s'en- 
fuit, laissant le malheureux possede plus mort que vif.' " — Ibid. 

Page 32. 
" as having power to insinuate themselves into." 
" It is said of Saul, that when ' the Spirit of the Lokd departed 



APPENDIX. 349 

from him, an evil spirit from the Lokd troubled him ;' and it 
may be as truly said of all wicked men, that when they forsake 
Gtod, Gtod will forsake them, and then they are under the power 
of the devil. 

" And indeed all the world are under the government of GrOD 
and His good angels, or under the direction of Satan and his 
evil spirits; and therefore, before we are received into the 
Church of Christ, we do solemnly renounce the devil at our 
baptism ; by which sacrament we are put under the immediate 
government of GrOD and His good angels, who are by GrOD ap- 
pointed to minister unto them that are heirs of salvation. Now, 
if we force these good angels to forsake their charge, there are 
others always ready to take us again into their power." — Bishop 
"Wilson, vol. ii. p. 241. Lib. Ang. Cath. Theol. 

Page 32. 

" for the trial of good men and the punishment of the wicked 
to act upon us from without." 

Bishop Wilson (Lib. Ang. Cath. Theol. ii. 236, 238,239) makes 
the following striking observations in his sermon on the nature, 
the power, and the malice of Evil Spirits. 

" There are other beings besides those we every day see and 
converse with, with which we are greatly concerned ; the Word 
of GrOD assuring us, that both good and bad angels are appointed 
or permitted by God, the one to succour and defend us, the other 
to hurt and ruin us, whenever we take ourselves from under 
His protection. Sometimes we are apt to ascribe too much 
power to evil spirits, and to be too much afraid of those whom 
we suspect to have dealings with them. And sometimes we 
despise them and their power, as if we had nothing to fear from 
them. We are in the wrong in both these extremes. * # S. Paul 
expresses the power of the devil after this manner : ' We wrestle 
not against flesh and blood,' that is against men like ourselves, 
' but against the rulers of the darkness of this world,' against 
wicked spirits, who endeavour all that is possible to make men 
as wicked as themselves. And S.Peter likens him 'to a roaring 
lion seeking whom he may devour,' that is, whom he may be 
permitted to destroy. ' He was a murderer from the begin- 



350 APPENDIX. 

ning,' saith our Lord, S. John viii. 44. And 'Rev. xii. 9, he is 
said to deceive the whole world. And because we are more 
affected with what we see or hear to be done by him, this 
history (Mark v. 13) is recorded, that we may not want suffi- 
cient evidence of what he can do. Having got possession of 
the poor man, he had no longer rest. Being forced by the 
command of Christ to leave this habitation, his malice went as 
far as he knew it would be suffered to go ; for getting posses- 
sion of the swine they were immediately every one destroyed. 
* * It was well even for these very people who lost their goods, 
that they knew the power of evil spirits by such a judgment as 
this. For the devil could as easily have destroyed two thou- 
sand of them as two thousand of their swine, had God permitted 
him to have used his power. # ' Jeses gave them leave,' to as- 
sure us that without His leave they had no power. And in 
Job, the evil spirit has no power to exercise his malice but when 
he has express leave from God. l Hast Thou not made a fence 
about him and about all that he hath ? ' This that the devil 
complained of was Job's security; but when God gave the 
word, i Behold, all that he has is in thy power,' we see what 
short work the devil made. * # And our Lord told S. Peter, 
' Behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as 
wheat : but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not ; ' 
that God would deliver thee from that great trial and tempta- 
tion ; and accordingly he was delivered by the grace of God ; 
though God suffered Satan to proceed so far as to make S. 
Peter to deny his Lord against his most solemn promises and 
resolutions. * 

" Further, God permits the devil to make use of his malice and 
power for the trial of good men, and for the punishment of the 
wicked. In the first place, this is what the Spirit of God foretold 
the Church of Smyrna : ' Pear none of those things which thou 
shalt suffer. Behold, the devil will cast some of you into pri- 
son, that ye may be tried. Be thou faithful unto death, and I 
will give thee a crown of life.' 

" This was the case of Job, and this was the great mistake of 
his friends, who thought that punishment was always for the 
faults of him that suffered. And yet our Blessed Saviour, by 
the decree of God, was to be the most afflicted, while He was 



APPENDIX. 351 

the most innocent of men. And His apostle S. Paul had a 
messenger of Satan, that is, a disease by God's permission, in- 
flicted on him by Satan, to prevent that pride which would 
otherwise haye ruined him. 

" In all these cases, good men have a sure promise to support 
their spirits : ' God is faithful, "WTio will not suffer you to be 
tempted above what ye are able ; but will with the temptation 
also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.' 

" But then this is not always the design of God's permitting 
the devil to have his liberty ; it is very often to punish the 
wicked that He takes off His restraining power. ' He cast 
upon sinners,' (saith the Psalmist, lxxviii. -19.) ' the fierceness 
of His anger, by sending evil angels amongst them.' And 
God had no sooner decreed to destroy Ahab for his wickedness, 
but an evil spirit forthwith undertakes to bring him to destruc- 
tion, by becoming a lying spirit in the mouth of all his pro- 
phets, whose advice he followed to his ruin." 

These simple statements appear to me to afford ample Scrip- 
tural proof of the external agency of Satan upon man. 



Page 34. 
"a perpetual warfare between these contending powers." 

" As there are legions of evil spirits, so we are assured, for our 
comfort, that there are legions of good spirits much more pow- 
erful than the other, and always ready at God's appointment 
to succour those that shall be heirs of salvation. # 

" When Elisha was beset by the Syrians in Dothan, and his 
servant in a fright cried, 'Alas! my master, what shall we 
do ? ' the prophet answered, ' Pear not, for they that be with 
us are more than they that be with them.' And immediately 
' the Lord opened the eyes of the young man : and he saw, 
and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire 
round about Elisha.' " 

Unhappily even in this enlightened age it is not out of 
season to continue this quotation. 

" Do but trust in God, and pray for His protection, and all the 
powers of hell cannot touch you, nor anything that belongs to you. 



352 APPENDIX. 

But then I must tell you, that the devil may gain a power, 
though limited, over the bodies or goods of such people as are 
so ignorant or wicked as to have to do with his instruments ; 
namely, charmers, witches, fortune-tellers, or the like. People 
do not consider this. If they can hope for ease from their 
pains, or any present advantage, they are little concerned whe- 
ther it comes from GrOD or the devil. No man, who calls him- 
self a Christian, ought to have to do less or more with such 
people and practices, lest he become a subject of Satan and his 
kingdom, while he thinks the least of being so. 

" I know that simple people have been persuaded to make use 
of these instruments of Satan, because they make use of some 
good words, as they say, or Scripture expressions ; but so did 
the devil himself, when he tempted our Saviour to fall down 
and worship him." — Bishop Wilson, vol. ii. p. 243. Lib. Ang. 
Cath. Theol. 

Page 34. 
" or rather wicked spirits in heavenly places." 

" It may be that some of those orders fell, or that they have 
somewhat of the power that good angels of those orders have. 
However, it is clear, that there is subordination and great diver- 
sity amongst them. One prince or chief (Matt. ix. 34) and the 
rest his angels. Again, divers kinds and some more powerful 
(Matt. xvii. 21). It seems also that they had this power ori- 
ginally (and perhaps according to the dignity of their natures) 
from the beginning (Jude vi.). Angelos qui non servaverunt 
suum principatum. Which probably was not wholly taken 
from them, though their power much limited, and they confined 
to exercise it only in those lower regions ; restrained most of 
all by our Saviour, by Whom also it shall at last be quite over- 
thrown (1 Cor. xv. 24, Bev. xx.), when the final sentence of his 
condemnation shall be put in execution. By their power over 
the air it should seem that they upheld their own (i.e. the idol) 
worship. And to disguise themselves the more, they persuaded 
the blinded world that their power was in the stars, &c, bring- 
ing in astrology, magic, and other such devilish arts, perhaps 
called the wisdom of the princes (and great men) of this world 



APPENDIX, 



353 



(1 Cor. ii.). Now though they are called the rulers, aud theirs 
the prince of this world (John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11 ; 2 Cor. 
ix. 4; Luke iv. 6), yet are they not so absolutely and wholly, 
but of the darkness (or dark part) of this world, i.e. either of 
those lower regions near the earth, which are gross and dork, 
and the air (though sometimes called heaven) not comparable 
in brightness to the superior parts, or higher heavens. Or else, 
of the darkness and ignorance of the heathen world ; which is 
by our Loed's coming (Who was the True and Orient Light 
of the G-entiles) very much (idol-worship being mightily de- 
creased) but not as yet quite dispersed. 

" Xow as those rulers are spiritual both in their essence and 
in respect of flesh and blood, i.e. human visible powers here on 
earth (Matt. xvi. 17 ; 1 Cor. xv. 50 ; Gal. i. 16 ; Heb. ii. 14) 
against whose persecutions the Apostle here fortifies them ; yet 
it seems there is another sort of them, that are still more spi- 
ritual, and in superior places, even sometimes in heaven itself; 
where they are begging leave to tempt us as Job, or to punish 
and destroy us, as the lying spirit in Ahab's prophets, or ac- 
cusing us for submitting to their temptations. (Eev. xii. 10 ; 
Zech. iii. 1.) 

" So that we have need both of very great courage and strong 
arms against such a powerful enemy. By his essence spiritual 
and invisible, malicious and wicked in the highest measure, 
assaulting us by his power, and as the lord of the world fright- 
ing us, — by his wiles and deceits entrapping us, in his own 
kingdom of darkness, — above and about us in the air, and en- 
deavouring to deprive us of our assistance in heaven." — Bishop 
Fell upon S. Paul's Epistles, (in loc.) 3rd edit. 1702. 

Page 36. 
" vouchsafed to us to contend against his wiles." 

" And here I shall take occasion to explain the meaning of two 
passages in the Xew Testament, and of speaking upon a subject 
which is not so well understood by Christians as it ought to be. 
The passages I mean are, 1 Tim. i. 20, and 1 Cor. v. 5, in both 
which places we have mention made of delivering wicked men 
to Satan. 

A A 



354 APPENDIX. 

" Now, because this is laughed at by profane people, who do 
not know the Scriptures, I will show you what this means. 
The Spirit of G-od, then, tells us, that the devil hath a king- 
dom and subjects, over which he reigns ; that is, over the chil- 
dren of disobedience : and that Jesus Cheist has also His 
kingdom and subjects, even all that obey His laws. And there- 
fore, when the Apostles and ministers of Cheist gained any of 
the subjects of Satan unto Cheist, they are said in Scripture, 
' to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of 
Satan unto G-od.' Now, when any of Cheist' s subjects shall 
become rebellious and refuse to obey His laws, His ministers 
are directed to admonish them of their sin, and of the dishonour 
they do their Prince and Saviotje ; and if they shall refuse 
their godly admonitions, then they are to turn them out of the 
Church, that is, that society which Cheist governs by His laws, 
protects by His power here, and intends to bless with eternal 
happiness hereafter. Being thus turned out of Cheist' s 
Church (that is, excommunicated) they are said to be delivered 
to Satan, not to be damned, as blasphemous people love to 
charge the ministers of Jesus Cheist, but, as the Apostle 
saith, ' That his spirit may be saved in the day of the Loed 
Jesus ;' that is, that sinners, if they are not utterly lost, may, 
with the prodigal when he was forced to herd with swine, see 
the happy state they are fallen from, and repent, and desire to 
get out of the snare and from under the dominion of the devil, 
and be restored to the favour of GrOD. So that excommunica- 
tion is made use of not as a punishme?it only, but as a remedy ; 
that sinners being awakened and startled at the evil state they 
are in, being deprived of all hopes of salvation, while they are 
out of the Church, they may more earnestly desire to be re- 
stored to Gron's grace and kingdom, that they may work out 
their salvation with more fear and caution for the time to 
come. 

" Were these things well considered, Christians would not look 
upon excommunication as a light matter, but would dread it 
(when inflicted according to the will of Cheist for crimes 
against God), they would fear that sentence as they would 
hell-fire. They would be afraid of Church censures, and of 
despising or weakening that discipline which Jesus Cheist 



APPENDIX 355 

lias appointed to guard His laws from contempt, and preserve 
His subjects from destruction. 

" To be delivered to Satan ! \Ynat a dreadful thought must 
that be to any one who does but read this history which we are 
now upon ! And though every subject of Satan is not in the 
condition of this poor creature, without rest night and dav, 
cutting himself with stones, and wandering in the mountains 
and amongst the tombs, yet it is misery enough to be under 
the government of Satan, whose servants are slaves, and whose 
wages is eternal misery'' — Bishop "Wilson, vol. ii. 241, 242. Lib. 
Ang. Cath. Theol. 

Page 46. 
" and confess the Sox of GrOD." 

" Cheist was supposed to be but a man both by him who 
invited Him, and by them who sat as guests at the table with 
Him. But that woman, who was a sinner, had seen something 
more than this in the Lobd. For why did she all those things, 
but that her sins might be forgiven her : She knew then that 
He was able to forgive sins ; and they knew that no man was 
able to forgive them. And we must believe that they all, they 
who were at the table, that is, and that woman who approached 
to the feet of the Loed, all knew that no man could forgive 
sins. Forasmuch then as they all knew this, she who believed 
that He could forgive sins, understood Him to be more than 
man."— S. Aug. X. T., vol. i. 392. Lib. of Fathers. 

Page 48. 

" Though an unexpected guest, she seeks Him out, as 
courageous," &e. 

" Ye saw a woman famous in the city, famous indeed in ill- 
fame, 'who was a sinner,' without invitation force her way into 
the feast, where her Physician was at meat, and with an holy 
shamelessness seek for health. She forced her way, then, as it 
were unseasonably as regarded the feast, but seasonably as re- 
garded her expected blessing." — S. Augustine. X. T. vol. i. 
p. 387. Lib. of Fathers. 

A A 2 



356 APPENDIX. 

" S. Augustine noteth : Of all those that sought to Christ, 
she (Magdalene) was the only sinner that for sin only, and for 
no bodily grief or malady at all, sued and sought to Him." — 
Andrewes, vol. ii. 37. Lib. Ang. Cath. Theol. 

Page 49. 

" to sustain the sight of a Eeing so Holy." 

The following reflection on the acts of Magdalene's penitence 
is both beautiful and impressive. " She stood at His feet ; she 
dared not as yet meet His eye. She, who with a holy shameless- 
ness shrunk not from the scorn of men, shrunk with a holy awe 
and fear at the eye of GrOD. We feel, as penitents, that we must 
come to GrOD ; and yet, when penitents, then is it aweful to come 
into that Presence, which awed us not in sin. And how would we 
stand, my brethren, in that blessed, but aweful, Presence ? May 
such of us as have been in any degree like her, so stand with her, 
until we too hear those blessed words, ' Thy faith hath saved 
thee, go in peace.' * # His Feet had gone in search of her 
who was astray ; the dust clave to them, even as He bore our 
sins upon Him, although He was harmless, separate from sin ; 
they could not touch His all holy soul. But with that simple 
love, wherewith she would afterwards embalm His Body, now 
would she remove from His feet the dust, which, in seeking 
her, had gathered round them. And then, when she found that 
they disdained not a sinner's tears, when tears from her were 
allowed to rest upon them, how was all the fervour of her love 
unlocked ! And even so, we too doubtless have felt that when, 
by some token of inward peace, He accepts, as we hope, some 
gush of sorrow, or deep abhorrence of ourselves, which He has 
given, then have we seemed, like her, able to pour ourselves 
forth in penitence ! " — Sermons on Solemn Subjects, 6. 

Page 66. 

" such by which guests are commonly distinguished." 

That these courtesies to guests were not unusual, see the 
Commentaries of Corn, a Lapide and Bernard Lamy. See also 
Home on the Scriptures, vol. iii. 440. 



APPENDIX. 357 

Page 67. 

" are the truly righteous." 

I am glad to be able to adduce the authority of S. Augustine, 
in confirmation of the correctness of this view. He says, in 
commenting on the text ; — " Cause there is for fear, yea great 
cause for fear, lest by these words of the Loed, there steal over 
the minds of those who understand them not aright, who in- 
dulge their fleshly lusts, and are loth to be brought away from 
them into liberty, that sentiment which, even as the Apostles 
preached, sprung up in the tongues of slanderous men, of whom 
the Apostle Paul says, ' And as some affirm that we say, Let 
us do evil that good may come.' For a man may say, If he to 
whom little is forgiven, loveth little ; and he to whom more is 
forgiven, loveth more ; and it is better to love more, than to 
love less ; it is right that we should sin much, and owe much 
which we may desire to be forgiven us, that so we may love Him 
the more Who forgiveth us our large debts. For that woman 
in the Gospel who was a sinner, in the same proportion as she 
owed more, loved the more Him Who forgave her her debts, as 
the Lord Himself saith, ' Her many sins are forgiven her, for 
she loved much.' JNow Avhy did she love much, but because 
she owed much? And afterwards He added and subjoined, 
' But to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.' ' Is it 
not better,' he may say, ' that much should be forgiven me, than 
less, that thereupon I may love my Loed the more ?' Te see, 
no doubt, the great depth of this difficulty ; ye see it I am sure. 
* * Suppose now two men, that by the clearer force of ex- 
amples ye may think upon what I have proposed to you. One 
of them is full of sins, has lived most wickedly for a length of 
time ; the other of them has committed but few sins ; they 
come both to grace, are both baptized, they enter debtors, they 
go out free ; more has been forgiven to one, less to the other. 
I ask how much does each love ? If I shall find that he loves 
most, to whom the most sins have been forgiven, it is to his 
greater advantage that he has sinned much, his much iniquity 
was to his greater advantage, that so his love might not be luke- 
warm. I ask the other how much he loves, I find less ; for if I 



358 



APPENDIX. 



find that lie too loves, as much as the other, to whom much has 
been forgiven, how shall I make answer to the words of the 
Lord, — how shall that be true which the Truth hath said, 
To whom little is forgiven the same loveth little ? ' See,' a man 
says, ' but little has been forgiven me, I have not sinned much ; 
jet I love as much as he, to whom much has been forgiven.' 
Dost thou speak truth or Christ ? Has thy He been forgiven 
thee to this end, that thou shouldest fix the charge of lying on 
Him "Who forgave thee ? If little has been forgiven thee thou 
lovest little. For if but little has been forgiven thee and thou 
lovest very much, thou contradictest Him Who said, To whom 
little is forgiven, the same loveth little. Therefore I give the 
more credit to Him, Who knoweth thee better than thou dost 
know thyself. If thou dost suppose that but little hath been 
forgiven thee, it is certain that thou lovest but little. ' What 
then,' says he, ' ought I to do ? Ought I to commit many sins, 
that there may be many which He shall be able to forgive me, 
that I may be able to love more ?' It presses me sore, but may 
the Lord, Who hath proposed this saying of truth to us, 
deliver me out of this strait. 

" This was spoken on account of that Pharisee, who thought 
that he had either no sins, or but few. Now unless he had had 
some love, he would not have invited the Lord. But how little 
was it ! He gave Him no kiss, not so much as water for His feet, 
much less tears ; he did not honour Him with any of those offices 
of respect, with which that woman did, who well knew what need 
she had of being cured, and by whom she might be cured. O 
Pharisee, therefore dost thou love but little, because thou dost 
fondly think that but little is forgiven thee ; not because little 
really is forgiven thee, but because thou thinkest that that which 
is forgiven is but little. ' What then ?' he says, 'am I who have 
never committed murder to be reckoned a murderer ? Am I 
who have never been guilty of adultery, to be punished for 
adultery ? Or are these things to be forgiven me, which I have 
never committed ?' See : once more suppose two persons, and 
let us speak to them. One comes with supplication, a sinner 
covered over with thorns as a hedgehog, and timid exceedingly 
as a hare. But the rock is the hedgehog's, and the hare's refuge. 
He comes then to the Rock, he finds refuge, he receives sue- 



APPENDIX. 359 

cour. The other has not committed many sins ; what shall we 
do for him that he may love much ? what shall we persuade 
him ? Shall we go against the word of the Lobd, ' To whom 
little is forgiven, the same loveth little ?' Yes, most truly so, 
to whom little is really forgiven. But thou who sayest that 
thou hast not committed many sins : why hast thou not ? by 
whose guidance ? God be thanked, that by your movement 
and voice ye have made signs that ye have understood me. 
Now then, as I think, the difficult has been solved. The one 
has committed many sins, and so is made a debtor for many : 
the other through God's guidance has committed but few. To 
Him to ^vVlioin the one ascribes what He hath forgiven, does 
the other also ascribe what he hath not committed. Thou hast 
not been an adulterer in that past life of thine, which was full 
of ignorance, when as yet thou wast not enlightened, as yet 
discerned not good and evil, as yet believed not on Him Who 
was guidiug thee though thou didst not know Him. Thus doth 
thy Gtod speak to thee : ' I was guiding thee for Mysele, I was 
keeping thee for Myself. That thou mightest not commit 
adultery, no enticers were near thee ; that no enticers were 
near thee was My doing. Place and time were wanting ; that 
they were wanting again, was My doing. Or enticers were 
nigh thee, and neither place nor time were wanting ; that thou 
mightest not consent, it was I TTho alarmed thee. Acknow- 
ledge then His grace, to Whom thou also owest it, that thou 
hast not committed the sin. The other owes Me what was 
done, and thou hast seen forgiven him ; and thou owest to Me 
what thou hast not done.' For there is no sin which one man 
commits, which another man may not commit also, if He be 
wanting as a Director, by "WTiom man was made." — S. Aug. 
Horn. N. T. vol. i. 389 to 392. Lib. Fathers. 

Page 72. 

" a large reward, an abounding grace." 

" AYho of us could trust himself to speak of the depth of that 
inward faith and love, which Cheist in an instant accepted 
fully, for which He, at once, blotted out all the past with His 
own gracious sentence, ' Thy sins are forgiven thee,' sent her 



360 APPENDIX. 

away, free from the past, in peaceful hope for the future, her 
heart guarded by that peace which passeth all understanding, 
until at last, she should lay her down and take her rest in Him 
Who is our Peace ? ' Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace.' 
Who shall measure that faith, which knew her Physician, Whom 
the Pharisee who would honour Him knew not, knew that He 
had power to forgive sins, knew that He was not a ' Man ' 
and a ' Prophet ' only, but ' Who ' He was that l forgiveth 
sins also,' GrOD and Man ? Her very action shows that she 
knew and believed in Him Who could read her inmost thoughts. 
* * * Or who shall tell the depth of that love which He shed 
abroad in her heart, that He, the Maker of the heart and its 
Judge, pronounced ' much love. ' * * * What can be ' much ' 
in the sight of G-on ?' Could the Seraphim's burning love to 
Him the Fount of love, from Whom all love flows forth, yet 
dwells fully only in Himsele, the Coequal Trinity, yea is Him- 
sele ? He tells us of others whom He hath loved, the beloved 
disciple, and, as it seems, this very Mary and her sister Martha 
and Lazarus, (and they must much have loved whom He so 
loved,) and Moses He pronounces ' faithful in all His house/ 
and Abraham He calls ' His friend ; ' and yet, to teach us sin- 
ners, how, if penitent, we may ourselves hope to love, He has 
kept this praise in store for one who was a grievous sinner ; of 
the woman who was a sinner, alone does He bear witness, she 
'hath loved much.' Well might that inward fire of love burn 
out of the soul the dross of sin, which He Who came on earth 
to kindle it, called ' much.' " — Sermons on Solemn Subjects, 
pp. 9, 10. 

Page 78. 

" chosen her way of serving GrOD." 

Some teachers, from the tenth chapter of S. Luke, represent 
Martha as a mere worldly-minded woman, wholly engrossed 
with the aifairs of this world ; and a few have gone so far as to 
attempt to draw an argument for the Calvinistic doctrine of 
predestination, by on the one hand depreciating the worth of 
the one sister, and on the other by giving a forced interpretation 
in respect to the other to the words " that part which shall not 



APPENDIX. 



361 



be taken from her ;" as though our Loed intended to say that 
henceforth she was in no danger of ever falling away. But I 
might easily prove by a large deduction of authorities that any 
interpretation unfavourable to the character of Martha as a 
truly religious woman is far from the general view of Scripture 
commentators. The few following notes are however only fur- 
nished for the more complete elucidation of the text ; and, as 
respects Mary, the general confirmation of the views set forth 
in this discourse. 

" Martha and Mary were two sisters, true kinswomen both, 
not only in blood, but in religion also ; both clave to the Loed, 
both with one heart served the Loed when He was present in 
the flesh."— S. Aug. Horn. 1ST. T., vol. i. 413. Lib. of Fathers. 

"TheLoED then did not blame Martha's work, but distinguished 
between their services. ' Thou art occupied about many things ; 
yet one thing is needful.' Already hath Mary chosen this for 
herself. The labour of manifoldness passeth away, and the love 
of unity abideth. Therefore what she hath chosen, ' shall not be 
taken from her.' But from thee, that which thou hast chosen 
(of course this follows, of course this is understood) from thee 
that which thou hast chosen shall be taken away. But to thy 
blessedness shall it be taken away, that that which is better 
may be given. Thou art still on the sea, she is already in port." 
— S. Aug. Horn. X. T., vol. i. p. 419, 420. 

Page 78. 

" without a breach of duty." 

" Both the sisters for a time sat attentively listening to the 
words of Cheist. Household occasions call Martha away. 
Mary sits still at His feet and hears. * * * Though Martha was 
for the time an attentive hearer, yet now her care for Cheist' s 
entertainment carries her into the kitchen ; Mary sits still. * I 
know not in whether more zeal. Grood Martha was desirous 
to express her joy and thankfulness, for the presence of so 
blessed a guest, by the actions of her careful and plenteous en- 
tertainment. I know not how to censure the holy woman for 
her excess of care to welcome her Savioue." — Bishop Hall's 
Contemplations. Bk. iv. Cont. 17. 



362 APPENDIX. 

" I must needs say, here wanted not fair pretences for the 
ground of this thy expostulation. Thou, the elder sister, 
workest ; Mary, the younger, sits still. And what work was 
thine, but the hospitable receipt of thy Saviour and His train ? 
had it been for thine own parent, or for some carnal friends, it 
had been less excusable ; now it was for Christ Himself, to 
Whom thou couldst never be too obsequious." — Ibid. 

" For what, do we imagine that Martha's serving was blamed, 
whom the cares of hospitality had engaged, who had received 
the Loud Himself into her house ? How could she be rightly 
blamed, who was gladdened by so great a guest?" — S. Aug. 
Horn. IT. T., iv. 418. 

Page 79. 

" entertaineth angels unawares." 

" O blessed woman," says Bishop Hall, "that had the grace 
to be the hostess to the Gtod of Heaven. # * A blessed pair, 
sisters, not more in nature than grace, in spirit no less than in 
flesh." Bk. iv. Cont. 17. 



Page 81. 

" a person who in one branch of the Christian Church." 

The Church of Rome appoints the 29th July to be observed 
as a festival in honour of S. Martha "Virgin. There is a tradi- 
tion that " after Christ's ascension she came to Marseilles, and 
ended her life in Provence, where her body was found at Taras- 
con, soon after the discovery of that of S. Mary Magdalene. 
It lies in a magnificent subterranean chapel of the stately col- 
legiate church at Tarascon, which is dedicated to God in her 
honour. King Lewis XI. gave a rich bust of gold, in which 
the head of the saint is kept." Thus writes Alban Butler in his 
life of S. Martha ; and whatever uncertainty may attach to the 
tradition, the fact of the veneration in which she is held by this 
portion of the Church is manifest ; and in its degree, helps to 
confirm the view here maintained, that she was a holy and 
religious woman. 



APPENDIX. 363 

Page 81. 

" would involve her sister in those many labours." 

"However, I cannot excuse the holy woman from some weak- 
nesses. It was a fault to measure her sister by herself, and 
apprehending her own act to be good, to think her sister could 
not do well if she did not do so too ; whereas goodness hath 
much latitude. Ill is opposed to good, not good to good. 
Neither in things lawful nor indifferent are others bound to our 
examples. Mary might hear, Martha might serve, and both do 
well. Mary did not censure Martha for her rising from the 
feet of Chkist, to prepare His meal : neither should Martha 
have censured Mary for sitting at Chkist' s feet to feed her 
soul. It was a fault, that she thought an excessive care of a 
liberal outward entertainment of Chkist was to be preferred to 
a diligent attention to Chkist' s spiritual entertainment of 
them. It was a fault, that she durst presume to question our 
Saviol t k of some kind of unrespect to her toil, ' Lokd, dost 
Thou not care ?' What sayest thou, Martha ? dost thou chal- 
lenge the Lokd of heaven and earth of incogitancy and neglect ? 
dost thou take upon thee to prescribe unto that infinite Wis- 
dom, instead of receiving directions from Him?" — Bp. Hall's 
Contemplations ; Bk. iv. Cont. 17. 

Page 82. 

"the advantages which your position denies." 

" Whether Martha be pitied or taxed for her sedulity, I am sure 
Mary is praised for her devotion. ' One thing is necessary.' 
Not by way of negation, as if nothing were necessary but this : 
but by way of comparison, as that nothing is so necessary as 
this. Earthly occasions must vail to spiritual. Of those three 
main grounds of all our actions, necessity, convenience, plea- 
sure : each transcends other : convenience carries it away from 
pleasure, necessity from convenience, and one degree of neces- 
sity from another. The degrees are according to the conditions 
of the things necessary. The condition of these earthly neces- 
saries is, that without them we cannot live temporally : the 



364 APPENDIX. 

condition of the spiritual, that without them we cannot live 
eternally. So much difference then as there is betwixt tem- 
porary and eternal, so much there must needs be betwixt the 
necessity of these bodily actions, and these spiritual : both are 
necessary in their kinds. # * 

" Neither is Mary's business more allowed than herself: ' She 
hath chosen the good part.' It was not forced upon her, but 
taken up by her election. Martha might have sat still as well 
as she : she might have stirred about as well as Martha. 
Mary's will made this choice, not without the inclination of 
Him, "Who both gave this will and commends it. # # 

" The stability or perpetuity of good adds much to the praise 
of it. Martha's part was soon gone; the thank and use of 
a little outward hospitality cannot long last; but 'Mary's 
shall not be taken away from her.' The act of her hearing 
was transient, the fruit permanent : she now hears that which 
shall stick by her for ever." — Bishop Hall; Book iv. Cont. 17. 

" S. Austin observes that this house represents to us the 
whole family of GrOD on earth. In it no one is idle, but His 
servants have their different employments ; some in the con- 
templative life # ; others in the active. * * He is the greater 
saint, whatever his state of life may be, whose love of God and 
his neighbour is more pure, more ardent, and more perfect ; for 
charity is the soul and form of Christian perfection. 

" But it has been disputed whether the contemplative or the 
active life be in itself the more perfect. S. Thomas answers 
this question, proving from the example of Cheist and His 
Apostles, that the mixed life, which is made up of both, is the 
most excellent. This is the apostolic life, with the care of souls, 
if in it the external functions of instructing, assisting and com- 
forting others, which is the most noble object of charity, be sup- 
ported by a constant perfect spirit of prayer and contemplation. 
In order to this, a long and fervent religious retirement ought 
to be the preparation which alone can form the perfect spirit of 
this state ; and the same must be constantly nourished and im- 
proved by a vehement love and frequent practice of holy retire- 
ment and a continued recollection, as Cheist during His 
ministry often retired to the mountains to pray ; for that pastor 
who suffers the spirit of prayer to languish in his soul carries 



APPENDIX. 365 

about a dead soul in a living body, to use the expression of 
S. Bonaventure. The like interior spirit must animate, and 
some degree of assiduity in the like exercises, as circumstances 
will allow, must support those who are engaged in worldly em- 
ploys, and those who devote themselves to serve Cheist's most 
tender and afflicted members, the poor and the sick, as Martha 
served Cheist Himself. 

" With so great love and fervour did Martha wait on our 
Redeemeb, that as we cannot doubt she thought that if the 
whole world were occupied in attending so great a" guest, all 
would be too little. She wished that all men would employ 
their hands, feet, and hearts, all their faculties and senses, with 
their whole strength, in serving with her their gracious Creator, 
made for us our Brother. Therefore sweetly complaining to 
Him, she desired Him to bid her sister Mary to rise up and 
help her. Our meek and loving Loed was well pleased with 
the solicitude and earnestness, full of affection and devotion, 
wherewith Martha waited on Him ; yet He commended more 
the quiet repose with which Mary atteuded only to that which 
is of the greatest importance, the spiritual improvement of her 
soul. ' Martha, Martha,' said He, ' thou art careful and troubled 
about many things ; but one thing is necessary.' If precipita- 
tion or too great eagerness had any share in her service, this 
would have been an imperfection ; which nevertheless does not 
appear. Cheist only puts Martha in mind that though cor- 
poral duties ought not to be neglected, and if sanctified by a 
perfect intention of charity are most excellent virtues, yet spi- 
ritual functions, when they come in competition, are to be pre- 
ferred. The former indeed become spiritual, when animated by 
a perfect spirit and recollection ; but this is often much im- 
paired by the distraction of the mind, and in the course of ac- 
tion. In our external employments, which we direct with a 
pure intention to fulfil the divine will, we imitate the angels 
when they are employed by God in being our guardians, or in 
other external functions with which God hath charged them ; 
but as these blessed spirits in such employ, never lose sight of 
GrOD, so ought we in all our actions to continue, at least vir- 
tually, to adore and praise His holy name ; but herein the eye 
of the soul is often carried off, or its attention much weakened. 



366 



APPENDIX. 



"Whereas in heavenly contemplation, the heart is wholly taken 
up in Gtod, and more perfectly united to Him by adoration and 
love. This is the novitiate of heaven, when it is the uninter- 
rupted occupation of the blessed. In this sense Christ so 
highly commends the choice of Mary, affirming that her happy 
employment would never be taken from her. He added, ' one 
thing is necessary ;' which words some explain as if He had 
said, ' A little is enough, one dish suffices ;' but the word 
necessary determines the sense rather to be, as S. Austin, S. 
Bernard, Maldonatus, Grrotius, and others expound it, eternal 
salvation is our only affair." — Butler, Lives of the Saints, S. 
Martha. 



Page 83. 

" come forth and serve them." 

" But what saith the Lord to Martha ? ' Mary hath chosen 
the better part.' Not thou a bad but she a better. Hear 
how better ; ' which shall not be taken away from her.' Some 
time or other, the burden of these necessary duties shall be 
taken from thee : the sweetness of truth is everlasting. * * * 
Now thou art occupied about much serving, thou hast pleasure 
in feeding bodies which are mortal, though they be the bodies 
of Saints ; but when thou shalt have got to that country, wilt 
thou find there any stranger whom thou mayest receive into 
thine house ? "Wilt thou find the hungry to whom thou mayest 
break thy bread ? or the thirsty to whom thou mayest hold out 
thy cup ? the sick whom thou mayest visit ? the litigious, whom 
thou mayest set at one ? the dead whom thou mayest bury ? 
None of all these will be there, but what will be there ? What 
Mary hath chosen : there shall we be fed and shall not feed 
others. Therefore there will that be in fulness and perfection 
which Mary hath chosen here ; from that rich table, from the 
word of the Lord did she gather up some crumbs. Eor would 
ye know what will be there ? The Lord Himsele saith of His 
servants ; * Verily I say unto you, that He will make them to sit 
down to meat and will pass by and serve them.' What is it to 
'sit down to meat' but 'to be still?'" — S. Aug. Horn. New 
Test., pp. 416, 417. Lib. of the Fathers. 



APPENDIX. 367 

Page 83. 

"the constant thought of GrOD." 

Concerning the two states of life, here discriminated, the 
Bev. William Gresley says in his Practical Sermons, London, 
1848, " When persons have arrived at the conviction that it is 
their duty to aim at the most perfect stature of the Christian 
character, and serve GrOD with all their heart and soul, always 
endeavouring to advance in nearness to Him and in conformity 
to His Divine character, there are two principal modes of life 
which are open to their choice — the active and the contempla- 
tive — that is to say, a life spent in active duties, such as befit 
their station in the world; or a life spent in devotion and 
prayer. Such, at least, are the different types or forms of cha- 
racter, if we desire to distinguish and view them separately ; 
though as I think, it will be seen, they are not in reality so 
distinct and incompatible as might, at first sight, be imagined. 
# # # We have here the two characters, the active and the con- 
templative, placed in contrast ; both good in their way ; for it 
is not to be supposed that Martha was a bad and worldly wo- 
man. There is no reason to doubt that she was a sincere 
disciple of our Lord ; it was the very sincerity of her regard 
for Him which rendered her so diligent and anxious to do Him 
honour. Neither, on the other hand, must we suppose that 
Mary was an indolent or merely sentimental person, who, under 
the plea of devotion, neglected her proper duties. The whole 
history of these two sisters shows that they were both sincere 
and good women, both true believers in Christ. # # * It is un- 
questionable that Jesus bestows His preference on religious 
devotion. * * In the present age, and in the country in which 
God has placed our lot, as I need scarcely observe, the bias of 
men's minds and feelings is almost entirely towards the active 
rather than the contemplative life. None of those whom I now 
address have probably the slightest intention of quitting the 
world and entering upon a life of ascetic devotion ; and, there- 
fore, it would be but time thrown away if I were seriously to 
warn you against the dangers of such a course. Our tempta- 
tion is almost wholly on the contrary side ; the world, with its 
cares and pleasures, has far more attractiveness for men of the 
present age than the desert or the cloister ; and those amongst 



368 



APPENDIX, 



us who are endeavouring to serve the Lord to the best of our 
ability, feel probably that whatever of Christian attainment we 
may have reached, assimilates more with the character of Martha 
than of Mary. 

" It is, however, highly necessary that we should endeavour to 
take correct and unprejudiced views on this important subject 
of Christian practice. * * # 

" There can be no doubt that devotion is the loveliest, the 
purest aspect of religion, — without which no approach to per- 
fection can be attained. * * We want devotion : we want the 
power, the delight, the habit of communing with God : we 
want love, which is the basis of devotion. Our efforts at devo- 
tion are painful — too often, alas ! unavailing. If some of us 
may approach the standard of Martha, few, indeed, have at- 
tained to that of Mary. * * 

" We have not acquired a habit of devotion. We have not 
learned to take delight in God's service. We do not love to 
sit at His feet, and listen to His gracious words. Eid many an 
one go on an errand of charity, or busy himself in a work of 
usefulness, and he will do it with readiness and satisfaction ; 
but if you desire him to worship God more regularly, he will 
feel reluctant, and doubt the necessity of doing so. * # 

" Amongst the duties of active charity with which the present 
age abounds, none perhaps is more valuable than that under- 
taken by District Visitors, who, under the guidance of the 
parochial clergy, give their time to works of charity amongst 
their poor neighbours. How might these duties be sanctified, 
if they were commenced each day by an act of devotion — if all 
who were engaged in such deeds of charity were to meet to- 
gether in God's House and offer up their common prayers and 
thanksgivings ! Nay, why should it not be a branch of their 
undertaking to qualify themselves to take part in the service of 
the Sanctuary, and join their voices in songs of devotion ?" 

The reader is referred to the excellent volume of Mr. Gresley, 
for much valuable matter in connection with the subject of 
this discourse. 

Page 84. 
" the somewhat modern traditions." 

I have either mislaid the reference which would prove the 



APPENDIX. 369 

words of my Sermon in this part, or I mnst confess to hare 
indulged in impressions concerning Martha, in which tradition 
scarcely warrants me. The following is the passage probably 
by which I may have allowed myself to be misled. 

"We are told by Petrus de Natal, that on the persecution of 
the Jews, which took place on the stoning of S. Stephen, 
Lazarus, with his sisters, S. Maximums and S. Ccelidonius 
who had been blind from his birth, and Marcella the seiwant of 
Martha, were put on board a vessel without oars or a pilot, and 
exposed to the sea ; and that they, under the guidance of God, 
came to Marseilles, where, by the teaching of Magdalene, the 
whole province was converted to GrOD ; and that the clergy and 
people of Marseilles made Lazarus their bishop : that after- 
wards Magdalene sought the solitary parts of the mountains, 
and that Lazarus, having governed the people with great suc- 
cess, departed in the Loed. See Corn, a Lap. in Joan. xi. 

The TI Lectio in the Brev. Eom. for the Festival of S. Martha 
may have also contributed to make me express myself so de- 
cidedly in the text. There Martha is said " by the wonderful 
holiness and charity of her life to have gained the affections and 
admiration of all the people of Marseilles." 

Butler gives much the same account as the above, and says, 
that " it is an ancient popular tradition of the inhabitants of 
Provence in France." He refers his reader to Nat. Alex. Saec. 1. 
and Solier the Bollandist, Julii, t. 5, adding that " The relics of 
these saints were discovered in Provence in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, those of S. Mary Magdalene at a place now called S. Max- 
imin's, those of S. Martha at Tarascon upon the Phone, and 
others in S. Victor's at Marseilles. They were authentically 
proved genuine by many monuments found with them in these 
several places." He further states that Solier, the Bollandist, 
confirms the tradition of the inhabitants of Provence, (p. 213, 
§ 14) and rejects that of Yezelay in Burgundy, whither some 
pretend that Magdalene's body was translated out of Provence, 
(ib. § 11, 12, 13. p. 207.) 

Our minds might perhaps rest with some satisfaction on the 
tradition which fixes the scene of the pious labours of this holy 
family at Marseilles, were it not that before quitting the sub- 
ject of the traditional accounts of Mary and Martha, (see also 

B B 



370 APPENDIX. 

notes to pp. 12 and 81) it would not be fair to omit a statement 
which shows that they are involved in no little uncertainty. 

" Certain Greeks, writers who lived in the seventh or later 
ages, tell us, that after the Ascension of our Loud, S. Mary 
Magdalene accompanied the Blessed Yirgin and S. John 
to Ephesus, and died and was buried in that city. This is 
affirmed by Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem in 920, (Horn, 
in Marias unguenta ferentes,) and by S. Gregory of Tours. 
S. Willibald, in the account of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 
says, that her tomb was shown him at Ephesus. Simeon Lo- 
gotheta mentions that the emperor Leo the Wise caused her 
relics to be translated from Ephesus to Constantinople, and 
laid in the church of S. Lazarus, about the year 890. But 
these modern Greeks might, perhaps, confound * # some other 
Mary among those that are mentioned in the Gospel with Mary 
Magdalene." — Note to Butler's Life of S. Mary Magdalene. 

Page 92. 

"her faith in His power to raise Lazarus." 

" Great was the opinion that these devout sisters had of the 
power of Cheist, as if death durst not show her face to Him ; 
they suppose His presence had prevented their brother's disso- 
lution : and now the news of His approach begins to quicken 
some late hopes in them. Martha was ever the more active ; 
she that was before so busily stirring in her house to entertain 
Jesus, was now as nimble to go forth of her house to meet 
Him ; she in whose face joy had wont to smile on so blessed 
a guest, now salutes Him with the sighs and tears, and cryings 
of a disconsolate mourner. I know not whether the speeches 
of her greeting had in them more sorrow or religion. She had 
been well catechized before, even she also had sat at Jesus' 
feet : and can now give good account of her faith in the power 
and Godhead of Cheist, in the certainty of a future resur- 
rection. This conference hath yet taught her more, and raised 
her heart to an expectation of some wonderful effect. And now 
she stands not still, but hastes back into the village to her 
sister, carried thither by the two wings of her own hopes and 
her Saviour's commands. The time was when she would have 



APPENDIX. 371 

called off her sister from the feet of that Divine Master, to 
attend the household occasions ; now she runs to fetch her out 
of the house to the feet of Christ." — Bishop Hall, Book iv. 
Cont. 24. 

Page 103. 

" struggled against the admission of error within her bosom 
with most indignant sorrow." 

With what care the Church of England has ever studied to 
preserve primitive doctrine and to reject all modern and novel 
teaching is extremely well pointed out in a small pamphlet 
which made its appearance last year, called " the Progress of 
the Church since the Reformation," the object of which may be 
readily gathered from the two positions which it very effectu- 
ally defends. 

"First, that every formal act of the Church since the accession 
of Elizabeth has tended to confirm these [said to be] ' relics of 
bygone opinions ;' to retain them in times when there was no 
hope of conciliating Romanists, and when there was the certain 
alienation of Puritans ; to cling to them when they were the 
objects of vigorous assault, and to add to their number. 

" Secondly, that every successive religious movement, every 
revival of earnestness which could be regarded as a church 
movement, has tended to a higher appreciation of these ' relics,' 
to a more full working out of the system they suppose, and so 
to a more entire conformity with their spirit. They stood at 
the Reformation, be it admitted, as it were on trial, in the midst 
of confusion, change, and uncertainty ; and the question was 
whether the Church in days of calm, when time had been 
afforded for reflection, and men could feel their ground, would 
still hold them fast. Three centuries have passed, and the 
Church does retain them. Clamours have been raised for their 
removal, and have been answered by arguments, by firmness, 
by endurance. Doctors have been raised up to defend them. 
Martyrs and confessors have suffered for the love of them, pious 
people have used and appreciated, have been purified and ele- 
vated by them, the Church in her synodical acts has confirmed 
them." — Progress of the Church of England since the Refor- 
mation. (Masters.) 

B B 2 



372 APPENDIX. 

Page 105. 

" assaults which harass her from without." 

The aspect of Church affairs in this country which more 
than two years ago called forth the language of encouragement 
contained in this sermon is not now so changed, but that our 
present position in many respects more than heretofore seems 
to call for its application, and to give it point and cogency. 
If, on the one hand, the troubles of the Church seem to in- 
crease and unwonted difficulties arise, and unlooked for dis- 
pensations fill our hearts with anxious forebodings for the 
future ; yet, on the other, the steady advance made in the 
deeper tone of teaching and in a spirit of missionary zeal, the 
fuller sense of responsibility entertained by, and the manifest 
devotion of their talents to the service of the Redeemer visible 
among the clergy ; and on the part of the laity, the realization 
of a more earnest spirit of sacrifice, a higher standard of Chris- 
tian morality and duty, a more wide-spreading and yet more in- 
tense charity, looking to the soul no less than to the body 
and to the mind ; and, moreover, a disposition in many to 
union who deemed themselves most widely separated in points 
of doctrinal truth, these form one aspect in which the features 
of the times may and should be viewed when the mind is apt 
to despond on a review of events which have recently tended to 
cast a peculiar gloom on the musings of Churchmen. 

Page 107. 

" the feast-day on which the lamb was chosen against the 
Passover." 

" Theophylact observes, that this supper was in itself more 
than an ordinary one, that it was a festival which was custo- 
mary among the Jews on the day previous to their taking up 
and setting apart the Paschal Lamb, which was always four 
days before it was sacrificed, that is, on the tenth day of that 
month. S. Cyril of Alexandria also intimates that such was 
probably the custom, and states as the reason, that after the 
taking up of the L amb they gave themselves up until the fes- 



APPENDIX. 67.6 

tival to fasting, abstinence, and purification." — Williams. Holy 
Week, p. 7. 

Page 107. 

" no doubt the same Simon who two years back." 

Lamy observes, "There is also reason to believe that this Simon 
is not diverse from that Simon at whose house the Lokd is rela- 
ted to have supped in Bethany after the resurrection of Lazarus. 
Matthew and Mark indeed call Simon of Bethany a leper, but 
he might formerly have been afflicted with a leprosy from which 
or from any other malady he might have been now declared 
free ; otherwise he would not have had guests, for lepers were 
wont to live cut off from human intercourse ; but if that Simon 
in whose house the Lokd was then staying be the same with the 
Simon the leper of Bethany, then he was the neighbour of Mary 
and Martha, sisters of Lazarus, to whom sometimes they afforded 
assistance [in entertaining his guests] so that it is not wonder- 
ful that Mary drew near and came into his house to wash and 
anoint the feet of the Lokd Whom she knew had just arrived." 
Lamy goes on after this to point out the harmony of this hypo- 
thesis with the actions of the penitent woman. — Append, in 
Harm. pp. 640, 641. 

Page 118. 

"Ecclesiastical art on the Continent." 

It is notoriously the fact that till very lately the whole of 
Western Christendom regarded Pagan or Classical architec- 
ture as the best style for all buildings whether ecclesiastical 
or civil. At the end of Henry the Eighth's reign our national 
architecture was no longer favoured by those who gave the 
impulse to taste. Even in Italy a classical style was every- 
where affected; it had given birth to S. Peter's at Borne, 
and thus foreign architects bred up in the Boman Com- 
munion gave us the first disposition to diverge from the eccle- 
siastical spirit exhibited in the works of our forefathers ; so 
that fashion, not a sentiment generated by anything exclu- 
sively Protestant in our Church, has been the cause of the 
change. It cannot therefore be urged with any truth that 
there is no sympathy between the old ecclesiastical buildings 



374 APPENDIX. 

and the teaching of the Prayer-Book and customs and insti- 
tutions of our Church. 

Indeed, the " tree-like Gothic aspiring to heaven, with its 
slender shafts and floral decorations," in which " the richness 
of an inventive imagination displayed itself," was no offspring 
of the Italian mind, but " breathes the true spirit of the Ger- 
man middle age," its most " splendid monuments being to be 
found in Germany, England, and a part of Prance, and in the 
north of Italy ' ' only. [Schlegel. Philosophy of Life, p. 265 ; Phi- 
losophy of History, p. 374. Bohn.] The origin of Gothic ar- 
chitecture may, perhaps, be safely considered as arising out of 
the inspirations resulting from the Christian religion, when ac- 
tuating and informing what Schlegel calls " the natural moral 
energy of the Germanic nations, which, as soon as it had re- 
ceived a religious consecration from Christianity, all the ele- 
ments of a truly Christian government, and Christian system 
of policy, were then offered to mankind." He here intimates 
that before they had not been fairly offered to mankind ; for 
he has already said that " with the usages and institutions of 
the Germanic nations, the peculiar temper of the Christian re- 
ligion perfectly harmonized ; incomparably better, at least, than 
with the arbitrary government of the Roman state, which, even 
after the conversion of Constantine, still retained, in all essen- 
tial points, a Pagan character." [Schlegel. Philosophy of His- 
tory, p. 347. Bohn.] From nations and institutions, then, 
with which the Christian religion is found best to harmonize, 
we might expect that a pure original Christian architecture 
would be developed ; and this, in fact, is an expectation that 
has been fully realized, as is shown in the wonderful structures 
on which the Saxon and German mind has exercised its potent 
influence. 

Page 118. 

"the experience of every day seems to deny." 

To any impartial mind the numerous beautiful structures 
which are in all parts of this kingdom rising to the glory of God 
and the diffusion of true religion, are ample proof that edifices 
suitable to the genius of the Church whose sublime yet simple 
worship they are calculated to carry out can be conceived in all 



APPENDIX. 375 

the beauty of Catholic art. And so far from its being the case 
that the revived taste for Ecclesiology originated among the 
Romanists, it is well known to those who have interested 
themselves in the restoration and the adornment of Churches, 
that the revived taste and feelings of our countrymen in this 
point are owing to the indefatigable enterprise and research of 
members of the Church of England. And so also may it be 
said of all other works of art. "We are neither lacking in books 
of sound Catholic devotion, nor in the polemical skill of great 
divines. And moreover we have yet to learn that the cunning 
Bezaleels and Aholiabs of the Church of Rome have offered 
more beautiful works of art at the shrine of the Christian sanc- 
tuary than have the author of the Christian Year and the great 
poet of the age, our own Wordsworth. 

Page 119. 
"Tor again I say, Me ye have not always with you." 

The following striking passage illustrative of this text is 
taken from the interesting little work on the " Reverence due 
to Holy Places," (pp. 95, 96, 97), by that zealous and earnest- 
minded layman Mr. Markland. 

" The poor are never to be neglected ; but let us not fall into 
the condemnation passed by our Loed upon those who censured 
Mary, by indulging a sneer at persons who expend part of their 
substance on Church restoration, and who are accused of being 
guilty of neglecting the poor, solely because they are concerned 
for the honour of G-od. We must not forget what we owe to 
Cheist, under pretence of what we owe to His members ; nor 
are men to count as wasted, what is expended in the outward 
worship of Gtod. 

" It was He Who was emphatically, and above all the Priend 
of the ' poor and needy,' Who accepted it at the very moment 
when He was about to establish a worship the most spiritual 
and inward, and at the same moment declared, ' Ye have the 
poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them 
good, but Me ye have not always.' The opportunities of con- 
tributing to the due adornment of G-od's House are, of course, 
far more rare than the daily obligation of showing kindness to 



376 



APPENDIX. 



the poor and needy, who are never to ' cease out of the land.' 
Let us feel assured, that ' no man will ever be found to do his 
duty worse toward his fellow creatures, because he does his 
duty to God well.' ' God, Who requires the one as necessary, 
accepteth the other also as an honourable work.' # * 

" Deceive not your own souls, nor attempt to deceive your 
neighbour's also, by affecting a compassion for the poor, as an 
excuse for your niggardliness towards the House of God. l He 
that can be content to see the church in ruins, will not much 
pass to see the poor in rags.' [Dr. Prank.] Can you render a 
greater service to the poor than by teaching them, by your 
works, to reverence God's Sanctuary, to value the privileges of 
public worship, and to ' seek first the kingdom of God and His 
righteousness ?' [Dr. "Wordsworth.] May we not, then, conclude 
that it is a good work, whenever we have the power, to show 
our zeal for God's glory according to our ability ? " — Reverence 
due to Holy Places, p. 97. 

Page 126. 

" What is given to them is bestowed upon Him : what upon 
Him descends to them." 

This assertion is clearly illustrated by the fact that a poor 
man has a real interest, and feels that he acquires a portion 
and possession in all that is bestowed upon the service of 
his Redeemer, whether in the solidity, the grandeur, and vast- 
ness of the sacred building, or in its enrichments and adorn- 
ments. And this is an interest and a sense of something pos- 
sessed by him which he can never realize in connection with 
any other great public buildings. In the house of God alone 
can he look for equal privileges with the wealthy and the great. 
Such a disposition and expenditure of wealth he can behold 
with full appreciation as calculated to do him good and to pos- 
sess him with a portion in a degree which almost every other 
kind of outlay would fail in affording him. Earthly courts and 
tribunals, however intended otherwise, become in fact for the 
most part the comfort and security of his better circumstanced 
neighbours rather than the protection of the poor man whose 
very poverty shields him from the need of law, and prevents 
him when oppressed from availing himself of it. The mansions 



APPENDIX. 377 

of the rich and great too he may indeed be prond of, bnt not as 
enjoying in them the personal interest that belongs to his 
Church, erected as they obviously are for the comfort and con- 
venience directly of their owners. 

It should be considered also by Christian men when they 
are engaged in erecting the sanctuaries of Gt'od in the land, that 
cost with a view to securing the durability of the building is all 
to the advantage of the poor man. The rich landlord might 
without impeachment of his piety build a slight fabric if he 
could safely count upon wealthy successors to whom to bequeath, 
when in decay or ruins some fifty years after the "task" of 
its restoration ; but the poor would, indeed, be sufferers by 
such an economy. Every age is not a peaceable and church- 
building age, as the Church of England and this country know 
to their cost full well. How many villages would have been 
now and for long entirely destitute of churches but for the un- 
parsimonious manner in which our religious forefathers devoted 
their wealth to the solemn celebration of God's worship. 

Page 140. 

"railed at the abuse of which they themselves had been the 

authors." 

This is true perhaps rather of parties than of individuals. 
No sooner were men awakened to the need of reformation in the 
Church than the crafty and interested resolved to make it the 
basis of their gains. Some of the great patrons of an extreme re- 
form, innovators rather than true reformers, the Cromwells and 
Leicesters, [Walton, 151] had but one object, that of enriching 
themselves by the church lands and revenues. Encouraging 
the hopes of the fanatical party they were by their means enabled 
to acquire and retain possession of a large proportion of them. 
These were the men who could appoint to the livings thus 
thrown into their hands persons the most ill-suited. 

" Patrons now-a-days search not the Universities for a most 
fit pastor ; but they post up and down the country for a most 
gainful chapman : he that hath the biggest purse, to pay largely, 
not he that hath the best gift to preach earnestly is procured." 
— Bishop Short, 261, quoted from Preface to Bullinger's Decads. 



378 



APPENDIX. 



" 111 August, Parker wrote to Griudal desiring him not to or- 
dain any more mechanics." — Ibid. 

" Queen Elizabeth adopted such measures with respect to 
Church property as would have rendered it impossible that 
England should have ever possessed a learned ministry had not 
her proceedings been partially stopped, &c. * # She was enabled 
to commit these depredations on the establishment by an act 
which passed in the first year of her reign, allowing her to ex- 
change the lands of vacant bishoprics for impropriated tithes, 
and though the crown was probably not much the richer for 
this iniquitous bill, yet the courtiers and favourites of the 
queen made such use of it as to render the Church unable 
to support its ministry." — Bishop Short, Church of England, 
p. 261. 

"Elizabeth wasted the Church in paying those courtiers 
whom her parsimony prevented her from rewarding otherwise. 
She did not begin the custom, but she ought to have put a stop 
to it. She did not perhaps allow it to go so far as the Puritans 
wished, or satisfy the desires of her courtiers, but it went to 
such a length that England has felt it ever since." — Bishop 
Short, Church of England, p. 263. 

" The courtiers joined with the Puritans in attacking the 
Church, the latter to depress its power, the former to share in 
the spoil, and to render the clergy beggars in order that they 
might depend on them." — Bishop Short, p. 265. 

But when the Church had undergone the needful degree of 
reformation in the eyes of all considerate men, we find the legi- 
timate successors of these same men in the race of a partly 
turbulent, partly fanatical spirit of reform, the very inheritors 
of their views, declaiming against the Church, and reviling her 
ministers, whom their own party had been chiefly instrumental 
in appointing to their livings, as "dumb dogs." The general 
depression of the Church, the handiwork of their forefathers, is 
made the plea of still further injustice and the ground and pre- 
tence for the need of still further reformation. Their forefathers 
had crippled the Church and these make a mock of her infirmity, 
and take away even the crutches upon which she leant for the 
time. So understandingly did Whitgifb speak when he said to 
Queen Elizabeth, " When they that serve at God's altar shall 



APPENDIX. 379 

be exposed to poverty, then religion itself will be exposed to 
scorn and become contemptible." And so it happened, for not 
long after the same Thomas Adams, from whom we have already 
quoted, says 

" This is godliness — to be at cost with God. Therefore our 
fathers left behind them pledges, evidences, sure testimonies of 
their religion in honouring Cheist with their riches (I mean 
not those in the clays of Popery ; but before even the locusts 
of the papal see made our nation drunk with that enchanted 
cup). They thought it no waste, either to build new monu- 
ments to Cheist's honour, or to better the old ones. "We may 
say of them, as Eome bragged of Augustus Caesar, What they 
found of brick, they left marble; in imitation of that precedent 
in Isaiah (ix. 10) though with honester hearts : ' The bricks are 
fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones ; the sycamores 
are cut down, but ive will change them into cedars' In those 
days charity to the Church was not counted waste. The people 
of England, devout like those of Israel, cried one to another, 
' Bring ye into God's house,' till they were staid with a statute 
of Mortmain, like Moses' prohibition, they bring too much. But 
now they change a letter (azrferte for a/ferte) and cry, ' take 
away' as fast as they gave ; and no inhibition of G-od or Moses, 
Gospel or statute can restrain their violence, till the alabaster 
box be as empty of oil as their own consciences are of grace. 
"We need not stint your devotion, but your devoration. Every 
contribution to God's service is held waste. Now any required 
ornament to the Church is held waste, but the swallowing down 
(I say not of ornaments, as of things better spared, but) of ne- 
cessary maintenance. Tithes, fruit-offerings, all are too little. 
Gentlemen in these cold countries have very good stomachs. 
They can devour (and digest too) three or four plump parson- 
ages. In Italy, Spain, and those hot countries, (or else na- 
ture and experience too, lies) a temporal man cannot swallow a 
morsel or bit of spiritual preferment, but it is reluctant in his 
stomach, up it comes again ; surely these northern countries, 
coldly situate, and nearer to the tropic [north pole, perhaps] 
have greater appetites. The Africans think the Spaniards 
gluttons, the Spaniards think so of the Frenchmen ; Frenchmen 
and all think and say so of Euglishmen ; for they devour whole 



380 APPENDIX. 

Churches, and they have fed so liberally, that the poor servitors 
(ashamed I am to call them so) the vicars, have scarce enough 
left to keep life and soul together, not as the defence of hunger 
and thirst and cold requires. Your fathers thought many acres 
of ground well bestowed ; you think the tithe of those acres a 
waste. Oppression hath played the Judas with the Church, 
and, because he would prevent the sins incurable by our fulness 
of bread, hath scarce left us bread to feed upon ; Daniel's diet 
among the lions, or Eli as' in the wilderness. I will not cen- 
sure you in this, ye citizens. Let it be your praise, that though 
you dwell in ceiled houses yourselves, you let not G-on's house 
lie waste. Yet sometimes it is found that some of you, so care- 
ful in the city, are as negligent in the country, where your lands 
lie, and there the temples are often the ruins of your oppres- 
sion : your poor, undone, blood-sucked tenants not being able 
to repair the windows or the leads, to keep out rain or birds. 
If a levy or taxation would force your benevolence, it comes 
malevolently from you with a ' Why is this waste ?' Raise a 
contribution to a lecture ; a collection for a fire ; and alms to 
a poor ^destitute soul, and lightly there is one Judas in the 
congregation to cry, ' Why is this waste ?' Yet you will say, 
' If Cheist stood in need of an unction, though as costly as 
Mary's, you would not grudge it, nor think it lost.' Cozen 
not yourselves, ye hypocrites. If ye will not do it to His 
Church, to His poor ministers, to His poor members, neither 
would you to Cheist. If you clothe not them, neither would 
you clothe Cheist, if He stood naked at your doors." 

Would it be believed that the above passage is introduced in 
the Introduction to Adam's Works in the writings of the Pu- 
ritan divines with this remark, 

"The following pithy and sarcastic passage throws much 
light on the loving behaviour of the sons of the Church of Eng- 
land to their mother half a century before the grand rebellion." 

What is here meant by the Editor's sneer of " the loving 
behaviour of the sons of the Church of England " ? Were 
not the " temporal men" whom his author speaks of as digest- 
ers of plump parsonages, but whom he is pleased to call sons of 
the Church of England, the chosen friends and supporters of 
the Puritan interest ; an interest which non-conformists of the 



APPENDIX. 381 

present day can hardly wish to disown ? "Why then fasten their 
wickedness upon sons of the Church of England, by^.whom as a 
body the acts of the constant friends of the Puritans have been 
always regarded with the utmost abhorrence ? On the other 
hand, if the courtiers and their "loving behaviour" are only 
aimed at, it seems hard that the descendants of the Puritans and 
professed inheritors of their theology in the nineteenth century 
should cast a stone at and complain of the behaviour of those 
apostate sons of the Church of England, whom their predeces- 
sors bribed from their allegiance and duty to her — nor can such 
conduct be easily characterized in other words than as rail- 
ing at the abuse of which they themselves, as a party, have 
been the authors. 

Page 140. 
" the humour for sacrilege long survived this first outburst." 

Thomas Adams, claimed for one of the doctrinal Puritans, 
though not a non- conforming one, says : — " ' Peace is within 
our walls, and prosperity within our palaces ;' yet we have a 
subtle adversary, sacrilege, that encroacheth sore upon us, and 
' hath taken many of God's houses in possession.' We cannot 
say, ' they have burnt up all the synagogues in the land,' but 
they have done very wickedly to the Lord's sanctuaries. The 
walls stand, and it is well if in many places they do so ; but 
there is not a Levite to feed the people. Alas, how can there, 
when there is nothing left to feed a Levite ? Though they 
have rent away Gtod's right, 'tithes and offerings,' (Mai. iii. 8), 
they shall never rend away Gtod's truth and gospel : rend 
themselves from it, indeed, they are likely to do." — Works of 
the Puritan Divines. Adams. 118. 

Mr. Markland well observes, "The well-known impressive 
and affectionate address made by Archbishop Whitgift to 
Queen Elizabeth, ' On the Sin and Danger of Sacrilege,' has 
the same just claim at the present day to a patient hearing, 
which it received from that monarch, and though the excellent 
Prelate pretended not, he said, to prophesy, yet has it not been 
visible in the last two centuries that Church land — what was 
given as an absolute right and sacrifice to GIod, and given for 



382 APPENDIX. 

ever, — when ' added to an ancient and just inheritance, hath in 
many instances proved like a moth fretting a garment, and 
secretly consumed both?' 'Let God and His Church have 
their inheritance,' said the Archbishop, and we say the same. 
Fearful, indeed, was the spoliation made, as the following brief 
statement will show. The present rental of the estates formerly 
belonging to the religious houses in England and "Wales, and 
now held by laymen, has been computed to three millions. 
The robbery was in a manner doubled, for not only were the 
lands and buildings themselves sequestrated, but as the demesnes 
of the religious orders were exempted from the payment of 
tithes, the grantees obtained these lands without bearing the 
ancient and proper burdens to which other estates are sub- 
jected. 

" It might reasonably have been expected that at the sup- 
pression this exemption would have been removed, but this 
favourable opportunity of restoring tithe to the secular clergy 
was disregarded ; and the act of 27th of Henry VIII., im- 
posing certain obligations on the several grantees, became a dead 
letter. What compensation did the public receive ? 

" The lay impropriator was bound by law to the performance 
of no works of mercy or charity. He owed no obligation to 
receive the stranger, or to relieve the poor and friendless. The 
laity could neither be helped by his prayers, nor edified by his 
preaching. No school of learning, sacred or secular, nor hos- 
pital or lazar-house, leaned for habitual support on the new 
possessor of monastic revenues. The traveller from afar lifted 
up his eyes, and looked in vain above the gate for the legend 
that announced to him a heart open as the wide portal that in- 
vited him to enter — Janua patet ; cor magis." — Oliver's Mo- 
nasticon. 

" How much both of truth and wisdom is contained in the 
following extracts time and experience have shown us : — 

" ' It was unhappy the laity seemed to stand so much to the 
point of interest, made a gain of their godliness, and built so 
many fortunes out of the ruins of the Church. Had they 
planted their zeal against the superstition in the monasteries, 
and let the revenues alone : had the rust been rubbed off, and 
the metal left behind : had these religious been brought back to 



APPENDIX. 383 

the primitive standard : had they been mended in their man- 
ners and belief, without forfeiting their estates ; the conduct of 
the whole business would have been more intelligible. ^Nay, 
had the number been retrenched, and the revenues translated 
to public and pious uses : had there been more Bishoprics erected, 
and better endowed : had the abbeys dissolved been turned into 
public schools and seminaries of learning ; into hospitals ; into 
provisions for disabled soldiers and seamen ; for the poor worn 
out with labour and age ; for orphans and widows ; for gentle- 
men and tradesmen unfortunate without their own fault ; — had 
half the monasteries been thus disposed of, the loss of them 
would not have been regretted; the community would have 
found their account in it, and the purity of the intention been 
more visible.' — Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. v., p. 22. 

" At the present time the amount of tithe in the hands of the 
lay impropriators is said to be £1,752,842, exceeding a moiety 
of the whole revenues divided among the English parochial 
clergy. What has been the result of this ? That which Whit- 
gift foretold : ' When they that serve at G-od's altar shall be 
exposed to poverty, then religion itself will be exposed to scorn 
and become contemptible.' Have we not often seen an incum- 
bent in the receipt of a paltry stipend for the discharge of most 
laborious duties, whilst the tithes are possessed by a layman, 
the great landowner perhaps of this and of contiguous parishes ? 
This has been and must always be a most heavy grievance to 
the clergy, the Church, and the people, especially in populous 
districts. The inhabitants have been deprived of all the bene- 
fits arising from a resident minister, as no individual could exist 
upon the miserable pittance, and the services of the Church 
have been performed by the clergyman of an adjoining parish. 
We need not describe the consequences ; the state of the popu- 
lation will too often be found to correspond exactly with the 
anticipations we should form on entering a district thus circum- 
stanced. 

" It is a matter deserving the serious consideration of every 
lay-holder of ecclesiastical property, whether the great practical 
difficulties with which the Church has had to contend since the 
Eeformation, when seeking to keep pace with the progressive 
increase in the number of her children, are not, in a great 



384 APPENDIX. 

measure, owing to the part which they and their predecessors 
have borne in crippling her resources. Had our churches, 
sufficiently endowed, been more numerous, so that adequate 
provision could have been made for all worshippers, had those 
of recent date presented a fitting ecclesiastical appearance, 
freed especially from intrusive pews, which, alas ! were deemed 
essential in order to supply the absence of an endowment, but 
which have excluded the lower classes, then we might not at 
this day have had to contend with the evils which spring from 
no religion, or from the progress of false doctrine, heresy, and 
schism. 

" In short, had the dissolution of religious houses been con- 
ducted on other principles than those of sacrilege and rapine — 
had their spiritualities been appropriated and bestowed judici- 
ously, the Reformation would have been as fruitful in temporal 
blessings, as it was in higher gifts. To more than one class 
of society without their walls, the immediate results were 
poverty, wretchedness, and discontent; and to the monks 
themselves there must have been the despair of age and help- 
lessness, when driven into a world which had forgotten, if it 
had ever known them. It might on the other hand have come 
to us with all of weight and influence and mercy, and instead of 
our now viewing the august memorials of past ages as mourn- 
ful heaps of ruins — ' thinking upon their stones, and pitying to 
see them in the dust,' — we might have beheld in every part of 
the kingdom, seats of learning, charity, and true religion 
planted on their foundations." — Appendix to Markland's 
Reverence due to Holy Places. 

Page 140. 
"was then despised and set at nought." 

" The Church of England, which is, and that justly, the glory 
of the Reformation, was then laid in the dust, she was ruined 
under a pretence of being made more pure and more perfect. 
Episcopacy, a divine institution, and therefore in no case to be 
deviated from, was abolished as anti- Christian ; our admirable 
Liturgy was laid aside as defiled with the corruptions and inno- 
vations of popery ; and the revenues which the piety of our 



APPENDIX. 385 

ancestors had established for the maintenance of our spiritual 
fathers, were ravenously seized on by sacrilegious laymen, and 
alienated to support the usurpation." — Nelson's Life of Bishop 
Bull, p. 22. 

" But there are amongst us such tender stomachs that can- 
not endure milk, but can very well digest iron ; consciences so 
tender, that a ceremony is greatly offensive, but rebellion is 
not. A surplice drives them away, as a bird affrighted with a 
man of clouts ; but their consciences can suffer them to despise 
government and speak evil of dignities, and curse all that are 
not of their opinion ; and disturb the peace of kingdoms, and 
commit sacrilege, and account schism the character of saints." 
— Bishop Taylor's Dedication to Sermon before the Parliament. 
Works, vol. vi. p. 335. 

" In the year 1644, the two houses issued an ordinance com- 
manding Christmas-day to be kept in future as a fast ; and thus 
it came to be no longer observed publicly as a festival through- 
out England, till the Bestoration." — Notes to "Wordsworth's 
Christian Institutes, vol. iv. p. 551, 552. 

" Who, by the help of their new lights, can discern Popery, 
not only in the ceremonies formerly under debate, but even in 
the Churches and pulpits wherein they used to preach against 
popery, and the bells wherewith they used to call the people 
together to hear them. These are by some of them cried down 
as popish, with other things very many, which their Presbyte- 
rian brethren do yet both allow and practise ; though how long 
they will so do is uncertain, if they go on with the work of re- 
formation they have begun, with as quick dispatch, and at the 
rate they have done these last two seven years. The having 
of godfathers at baptism, churching of women, prayers at the 
burial of the dead, children asking their parents' blessing, &c, 
which whilome were held innocent are now by very many 
thrown aside as rags of Popery. Nay, are not some gone so far 
already, as to cast into the same heap, not only the ancient 
hymn Gloria Patri (for the repeating whereof alone some have 
been deprived of all their livelihoods) and the Apostles' Creed ; 
but even the use of the Lokd's Prayer itself? And what will 
ye do in the end thereof?" — Bishop Sanderson. 

" The administration of the Eucharist had been altogether 

C C 



386 



APPENDIX. 



neglected for many years in most parishes of the three king- 
doms, and in both universities ; that of Oxford having had no 
Communion for above twelve years." Durell's View, &c. — 
"Wordsworth's Christian Institutes, vol. iv. pp. 561, 562, 563. 

" The time itself, and the young people thereof of either sex 
had been educated in all the liberty of vice, without reprehen- 
sion or restraint. All relations were confounded by the several 
sects in religion which discountenanced all forms of reverence 
and respect, as reliques and marks of superstition. Children 
asked not blessing of their parents, nor did these concern them- 
selves in the education of their children, but were well content 
that they should take any course to maintain themselves, that 
they might be free from that expense. The young women con- 
verse without any circumspection or modesty, and frequently 
meet at taverns and eating-houses. # * * Parents had no man- 
ner of authority over their children, nor children any obedience 
or submission to their parents ; but every one did that which 
was good in his own eyes. # * # There were never such exam- 
ples of impiety between such relations in any age of the world, 
Christian or heathen, as in that wicked time, from the begin- 
ning of the rebellion to the king's return. * * * The relation 
between masters and servants had been long since dissolved by 
the parliament, that their army might be increased by the ap- 
prentices against their masters' consent ; and that they might 
have intelligence of the secret meetings and transactions in 
those houses and families which were not devoted to them ; 
from whence issued the foulest treacheries and perfidiousness 
that were ever practised ; and the blood of the master was fre- 
quently the price of the servants' villainy. # * 

" In a word, the nation was corrupted from that integrity, 
good nature, and generosity that had been peculiar to it, and 
for which it had been signed and celebrated throughout the 
world ; in the room whereof the vilest craft and dissembling 
haa succeeded. The tenderness of the bowels, which is the 
quintessence of justice and compassion, the very mention of 
good nature, was laughed at, and looked upon as the mark and 
character of a fool ; and a roughness of manners, a hardheart- 
edness and cruelty was aifected. In the place of generosity a 
vile and sordid love of money was entertained as the truest 



APPENDIX. 387 

wisdom, and anything lawful that would contribute towards 
being rich. There was a total decay, or rather, a final expira- 
tion of all friendship ; and to dissuade a man from anything he 
affected, or to reprove him for anything he had done amiss, or 
to advise him to do anything he had no mind to do, was thought 
an impertinence unworthy a wise man, and received with re- 
proach and contempt." — Clarendon's Life, Continuation, a.d. 
1660, vol. i. p. 353, &c. Edit. 1827. 

The features again are very similar, as sketched by the bold 
and somewhat coarse pencil of E. South. * # * " And lastly for 
the conjugal relation (a thing of the greatest and most direct 
influence upon the weal or woe of societies, or of any other 
thing in the world besides) it is but too frequent a complaint 
that neither men are so good husbands, nor women so good 
wives, as they were before that accursed rebellion had made 
that fatal leading breach in the conjugal tie between the best 
of kings and the happiest of people." 

A single example more may be given from a Puritan divine, 
Jeremiah Whittaker, writing to Oliver Cromwell, soon after 
his elevation to the protectorate. 

" Religion is not only weakened by the daily growing of al- 
terations. The reins of government a long time have been let 
loose, and are now lost in the Church totally — in families ex- 
tremely, so that masters know not how to order their servants, 
nor parents their children. All grow willing to command ; but 
unwilling to be commanded. Sabbaths are generally profaned, 
ordinances despised ; the youth playing, whilst the minister is 
preaching ; the consciences of many growing wanton, abusing 
liberty to all licentiousness." — Wordsworth's Christian Insti- 
tutes, note, vol. iv. p. 350. 

Page 151. 
" Even inanimate nature bears the impress of pain." 

So universally, indeed, is the cross planted throughout the 
world, that in order that man, in his wilful blindness, should 
not mistake the true aspect which this earth presents amidst 
that wonderful beauty which his affections might otherwise be 
well disposed to liuger upon and take up with, GrOD has in no one 

c c 2 



388 APPENDIX. 

thing exhibited greater care than in impressing upon all things 
in art and nature the stamp of the cross. For surely they have 
not indulged in a mere fancy, who tell us that " it is the com- 
monest thing in art and nature ; that it is figured to the eye by 
the bird, who, with outstretched wings, soars heavenwards ; that 
the finny tribe do also float upheld by it ; that the despised animal 
which once bore our Lord, bears on its shoulders the memorial 
of His Cross ;" that our doors and windows, the soldier's sword 
and spear, the husbandman's spade, and the sails of the mill, 
from whence comes our daily bread, all teach of the Cross ; that, 
as zoologists assure us, the animal frame is built upon the same 
structure ; and, as botanists, that were one cast on a desert island, 
he might safely eat of any cruciferous plant, however unknown 
to him. Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Minutius Felix, accord- 
ing to Lamy, thought facts of this kind of sufficient dignity 
to urge in controversy against the heathen. They instance in 
the sail of a ship propelling the vessel by the cross ; and in the 
human figure with its extended arms. The cross, they said, 
they themselves bore in their standards ; and as regards their 
drapery, Tertullian says, " I praise your diligence ; you would 
not have bare and unadorned crosses merely:" while Minutius 
Felix goes on to charge them with not merely setting up the 
cross in their trophies, but thereon affixing the effigies of the 
man. 



Page 167. 
" This, then, was a singular insight into His teaching." 

Origen, however, it is to be confessed, plainly favours a dif- 
ferent view, where he says, " Defectus fidei non est negandus ; 
defectus amoris non est vituperandus :" (Origen, Horn, de Mar. 
Magd.) which Bishop Andrewes translates, " "We cannot com- 
mend her faith ; her love we cannot but commend." S. Jerome 
and S. Cyprian, however, have passages which more incline to 
the view here taken. "The error of the woman," he says, 
" was allied with piety ; piety in that she longed for Him Whose 
Majesty she had known ; error, in that she said ' They have 
taken Him away.' " — S. Hierom. ep. 150, ad Hedibiam. 

Mr. "Williams (Eesurrection, p. 136,) quotes S. Cyprian as 



APPENDIX. 389 

saying, " Though they went with no firm step, and their foot tot- 
tered with doubt, yet they were seeking Hm AYhoni they loved, 
and despaired not ; and from hence it came to pass, that the 
perseverance of their love deserved to find. They, therefore, 
first saw and knew who had loved with most fervour, and had 
sought with most devotion." — De Eesur. Cheisti. And S. Je- 
rome, " They who were thus seeking, they who were thus run- 
ning, merited to meet the rising Lobd, and first to hear ' all 
hail !' that the curse of the woman Eve might in these women 
be overturned." — In TCatt. ad loc. 



Page 177. 

" Cheist came forth and acknowledged His bride." 

" A man of great energy of character, Pope Gregory TIL, 
arose to reform the Church, and achieve its independence 
against the many unlawful encroachments of the secular power. 
And when a prince, distinguished indeed for his warlike quali- 
ties, but utterly characterless, and animated with an unquiet 
spirit ; who, according to the unanimous testimony of his con- 
temporaries, had incurred many and most serious charges ; 
when this prince first attacked and deposed the Pope, and the 
latter laid him under an excommunication, the conduct of the 
pontiff was not only in strict accordance with the general opi- 
nion of the age as to the mischievous rule of this secular poten- 
tate, but was quite conformable to the then prevailing doctrine 
of public law, which sanctioned the responsibility and accoun- 
tability of the temporal power. Hence Henry IT. found it 
more expedient to loose himself from this excommunication by 
a feint submission, than to impugn it by open force ; although 
lie never afterwards ceased persecuting the Pope, whose con- 
stancy was proved in adversity and persecution. In our own 
times, justice has at last been rendered to the great qualities of 
this pontiff, and it has been allowed he was perfectly free from all 
selfish views ; and that the austere and decisive energy of his cha- 
racter sprang from no other motive, than a burning zeal for the 
reform of the Church and of mankind. The Grerman historians 
in particular, and in truth those on the Protestant side, have 
been the first to perform this act of justice ; and the name of 



390 



APPENDIX. 



Gregory VII., who lived in times so different from our own, 
has long ceased to be with the Germans a watchword for party 
strife."— Schlegel's Philosophy of History, 359, 360. (Bonn.) 

Page 178. 
" under such an iron tyranny it was." 
The reader is referred for a confirmation of these statements 
to Mac Parlane's Cabinet History of England, vol. iii. pp. 190 
to 201. 

The Archbishops Stigand, Lanfranc and Anselm receive from 
this author more justice than it has been usual with the civil 
historian to concede to these great worthies. 

Page 179. 

" that half-smothered seedling of truth, the growth of which 
the venerable Hooker first watched and tended." 

I am aware that, in thus speaking, I prejudge a question as 
to what the real tendencies of the Reformation were. Some 
remarks of a small pamphlet, " The Progress of the Church 
since the Reformation," so ably deal with this question, that I 
shall offer no apology for again calling the reader's attention 
to that publication. The reader will do well to consult the ad- 
mirable strictures on the life of Archbishop Laud, in the Chris- 
tian Remembrancer for May, 1845. 

Page 185. 
" severed from the Church of Chkist." 

The writer, in the year 1846, prepared for the pulpit the fol- 
lowing passages ; they were not, however, delivered : — 

Augustine, with many other persons of good talents, had 
suffered himself to be ensnared by the heretical teaching of the 
Manicheeans ; but after being subject to their heresy during a 
period of nine years, he at length rejected it, and submitted 
himself to the Church Catholic, becoming for the future one of 
her greatest doctors. 

Now among his reasons for his conversion was, principally, 
the consent given to the Church by all people, in all places of 
the earth ; as though he had reasoned thus with himself: — 






APPENDIX. 391 

There is this difference between the Catholic faith and the opi- 
nions of those sects that divide from it, in that the latter are 
only comprehended within the walls of some city (it may be), 
or the limits of a province, of a kingdom, or a nation : but as 
for the true religion, as saith S. Paul, " It is preached through- 
out the world ;" or, it is Catholic, as we in the Creed express it. 
A stronger reason this than it at first sight appears to be ; for 
it is the same kind of argument that is commonly used to prove 
the existence of a GrOD. As thus ; if all the nations of the earth 
have come to an agreement that there is a Divine Being, there 
is then the highest probability that a doctrine so widely as- 
sented to is true. 

And so in those days (for the argument may not be applied 
with equal force to the present state of Christendom) it was 
urged, "If there is everywhere in the world a certain well 
known Christian doctrine and communion, and all other pro- 
fessedly Christian teaching, in essentials differing from this 
doctrine and communion, is but partially diffused throughout 
the Christian world, some kind of teaching in one place, some 
in another, then certainly a sure note, whereby the soundness 
of doctrine may be tested, and G-od's Church be discerned from 
heretical institutions, is furnished to the faithful." 

" If you would find the true Christian Church," said Augus- 
tine, " you may look for those who hold it in all parts of the 
world, and they all acknowledge one another's communion." 
jS^ow this unhappily is not the case with the Catholic Church 
of the present day. The rule, if it exist at all, is obscured. 
The Church is divided into Eastern and "Western Christendom, 
and a further division (that of the British Churches) has taken 
place since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when communion 
was denied to it by the great body of the AT estern Patriarchate ; 
so that, if unity is to be insisted on as a note of the Church, it 
must not be urged precisely under the same restrictions as it 
was in the fourth century. The rule of S. Augustine must be 
applied, if applied at all, in a modified form. The same visible 
unity coidd not be urged now as then, as an argument for the 
recognition of Cheist's Church on earth. That appeal to a 
perfect visible unity, GrOD has, it would seem, in His wise pro- 
vidence withdrawn from us ; as if, perhaps, as Christianity en- 



392 



APPENDIX. 



(lures in the world longer, and the evidence, on the ground of 
duration, becomes too strong for the exercise of faith, so it is 
necessary to withdraw from before our eyes the note of unity 
and universal agreement, lest the divine quality of faith should 
be no longer requisite in Christians. 

In place, then, of a complete external and visible intercom- 
munion of Churches, such as was seen in the primitive times of 
Christianity, we have the whole society of Christians bonded 
together by a unity (not, indeed, invisible), but of such a kind 
as may call forth a more intense faith. Churches, whose per- 
fect unity is to the mortal eye marred, may, from their union 
with the Church invisible and triumphant in heaven (now by far 
the larger part), and with Christ their head therein resident, 
obtain for their holy ones all the essential benefits of Christian 
union, which the Church Catholic heretofore derived more directly 
from its perfect visible unity on earth. Here, then, is a call for 
the exercise of faith. Christ prayed for unity, declared His 
Church to be one kingdom ; and answering to this, the Church 
once had unity perfect and visible. But now Rome alone pre- 
tends to possess that perfect and visible unity : we must there- 
fore endeavour after such a faith in our mother the Church of 
England as to enable ourselves to set aside the specious reason- 
ings of the Romanist concerning her ; and to see that, although 
Christ's garment may have been sadly disfigured and rent by 
divisions, yet that it is not therefore entirely torn asunder, or so 
defaced but that its Great Owner can thereon discern the traces 
of a most true and heavenly unity. 

Now the Romanist asserts that a perfect visible unity is an 
essential in the Church of Christ — that the idea of two 
Churches on earth is an anomaly, that Christ's kingdom is but 
one, and that one supreme earthly officer must exercise authority 
over it. But this is the very point they are bound to prove. For 
supposing for argument's sake that the whole Christian Church 
did submit to the Bishop of Eome for the first thousand years (a 
point as we well know the very farthest removed from an incon- 
trovertible fact), yet then surely the Church divided. At that 
time, if never before, there was division and a suspension of inter- 
communion. The Church became two great and separate go- 
vernments, Eastern and Western Christendom. "Where then 



APPENDIX. 393 

were the faithful to look for the one Church ? The Gospel was 
surely still preached in all the world, no less in the East than 
in the West. S. Paul's rule and S. Augustine's rule were 
equally yalid after as before this division of the East and West. 
Before the mutual excommunications of the Eastern and Wes- 
tern Churches took place, Cheist's religion was preached in all 
the world. Was the Eastern Church less Cheist's Church 
after than before this great division ? Let us try this case by 
another familiar to us all. We know that when the ten tribes of 
Israel separated from Judah, Judah became G-od's own beloved 
Church ; but even then Israel was not altogether cast oft*, but 
was claimed by Almighty GrOD as His people. Although a 
false worship had been introduced and false priests chosen 
from among the lowest of the people, and the calves of Dan and 
Bethel erected, nevertheless Elijah contended amongst them 
for G-od's truth in the land, not so much, it would seem, against 
Jeroboam's sin as against the idolatrous priests of Baal. Among 
them it was that Elisha's great works were wrought. Amos 
and Hosea both prophesy for their instruction, and constantly 
speak of them as Gtod's people ; as " Prepare, Israel, to meet 
thy G-od ;" and " O Israel, return unto the Loed thy GrOD." 
Although it is said, " Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, 
and the house of Israel with deceit ; but Judah yet ruleth with 
G-od and is faithful with the saints ;" we have however the Al- 
mighty represented as saying with the most perfect tenderness 
" How shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? how shall I deliver thee, 
Israel ? how shall I make thee as Adniah ? how shall I set thee 
as Zebohn ? Mine heart is turned within Me, My repenting s 
are kindled together, I will not execute the fierceness of My 
anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim." Xow, without 
instituting any comparison between the apostolical character of 
Eastern Christendom in their proceedings in the eleventh cen- 
tury, and those of Jeroboam, in being the author of the schism 
of the ten tribes (which far be from us), let us ask ourselves 
this simple question, Can it be possible that GrOD "W no loved to 
that degree His own people as so far to overlook a schism in 
which the temple was changed and the succession of the priest- 
hood utterly lost, that He still retained them for His people and 
watched over them as having more of the spirit of His institutions 



394 APPENDIX. 

among them than any other people besides the inhabitants of 
Judah — can it be possible, I say, that God should be so full of 
mercy to those who were comparatively undeserving of His love, 
and yet be so inexorably severe with one-half of Christendom, 
as to cut it off from the other — a Patriarchate never condemned 
by any general council, retaining all apostolical institutions, in 
numbers as great as the one which sought its overthrow, and 
rejoicing in a magnificent succession of saints P 1 Can it be pos- 
sible that He should cast off a Church whose greatest alleged 
sin in the eyes of her opponents was that her patriarch had 
written in condemnation of the practice of the Latin Church in 
using unleavened bread in the Eucharist, but whose real crime 
was that she had dared to resist the arrogant assumption of 
Rome ? For the Bishop of Eome's legate declared "that they 
came not to discuss the points in dispute, but to insist on the 
adoption of their own rites and customs." And the fact corre- 
sponds with the conclusion arrived at. Eastern Christendom, 
after the lapse of 800 years, retains its place in the Christian 
economy, a perpetual witness against the great error of Rome 
in striving for a power which, though in God's providence as- 
serted with some success in past ages and confessedly with no 
mean benefits to the Christian Church, yet is proved by the 
past history and the present state of Eastern Christendom not 
to have been as of Divine institution, and therefore of the essen- 
tials of Christ's Church. 

Here, then, we see a perfect visible unity may be broken. 
Two Churches were from the year 1050 on the earth, from 
henceforth actuated by a different policy ; but the one no less 
the Christian teacher of nations, and preserved in unity by the 
Great Head of the Church and Fountain of unity, than the 
other. This was the produce of the eleventh century. At that 
time a great principle was formally asserted in the Church of 
Cheist, that the unity of Cheist's kingdom might subsist 
when He so allowed it under a form of plurality. An extension 
of this plural form of the Body of Cheist, we of the Church of 
England contend has been allowed to us by the Great Head of 

1 The claims of the Eastern Church to Catholicity and vital holiness, are 
well considered in the valuable article on Development, in the Christian Re- 
membrancer, for 1847, vol. xiii. 204 to 210. 



APPENDIX. 395 

the Cliurcli. For out of the wrecks of that vast schism, which 
was effected in the sixteenth century (concerning which we 
now well know our suspicions are reasonably alarmed when we 
find that the formal teaching of both its great leaders, has 
almost all passed away from the earth, and degenerated into 
forms of heresy, many of them denying the God that bought 
them) — out of the remnants of true religion, I say, which the 
Reformation left to those who were concerned in it, there did 
spring one institution which has been singularly blessed of GrOD 
— the Church of England. This Church, like the Churches of 
the East, in separating (or rather suffering separation) from the 
Church of Rome, suffered no such losses it would seem as are 
irreparable. Her Bishops apostolically descended — her essen- 
tial doctrines as well handed down through the great teachers 
of the early Reformation Church in this country as freshly 
drawn from sources of primitive authority — her liturgies drawn 
from the treasure house of past ages — the blessed Sacraments 
retained, and ordinances — -which if shorn (for the times were 
evil, and wilful men were to be conciliated) of much of their 
ornament, yet consigned as heretofore the powers of life to the 
sin- sick soul — this is the Church (more blessed to us, more 
endeared to us because she hath suffered for the children she 
hath brought to the birth) — this is the Church which has come 
down to us chastened in affliction, and purified seven times in 
the fire: coming forth, therefore, as we see with wonder, 
no less our own than our opponents', yet more bright than at 
any previous period of her history, unharmed either by perse- 
cution or by prosperity, but deriving equally her lesson from 
both. And now she bids her impatient sons beware, lest 
despising that naked unprotectedness with which it has pleased 
GrOD to visit her, (it may be for the sins of her ministry, — it 
may be for the sins of the nation with whom she is united) 
they derive to themselves and to their children the curse of the 
son of Xoah. Have all kinds of humours been activelv en- 
gaged at all times of her history in her and against her, and 
studying to reduce her bulwarks ? Even so — yet mark the 
result. Read her history, and you will find that each partial 
downfal has been in her but a revival of, and more strict 
adherence to, primitive truth. Waiting upon the Eokd, " she 



396 



APPENDIX. 



shall renew her strength ; she shall mount up with wings as 
eagles ; she shall run and not be weary ; she shall walk and 
not faint." If she can thus progress under intense difficulties 
in recovering some portion of that Catholicity she was obliged 
to concede on the first dawnings of the Reformation, what may 
we not look forward to as the result of her future career ? The 
extent of the British Churches is even now a subject of deep 
thought to an earnest mind ; and there seems in the provi- 
dences of GrOD a destiny awaiting the Church of England, the 
Bishoprics in the colonies, her missions, her daughter- Churches 
of Episcopal Scotland and America, perhaps not inferior in 
splendour to the Patriarchates of Borne and of Constantinople. 
Let us, then, lift up our hearts in holy faith towards God, and 
be dismayed by no signs of approaching evil — signs not of 
wrath, but of the chastening hand of a loving Eather, ; for what 
has been effected amongst us in times past — what is in course 
of doing in times present — are all earnests of the great things a 
Gracious GrOD has in store for us, if we continue holding fast 
the faithful Word as we have been taught. 

Page 190. 

" bring them to the sepulchre, altogether unnecessary." 

That this conclusion may appear the less improbable, let 
it be considered that there is every reason to believe that the 
same conviction rested on the mind of the mother of our Lord, 
who would not now any less than heretofore, treasure up the 
words of her Divine Son in her heart. Perhaps, indeed, it was 
her greater faith which caused her to remain within doors, 
waiting the great evenl of the resurrection of our Saviour in 
the solemn repose of quiet hope ; while the comparative in- 
firmity of the faith of Magdalene, great as it undoubtedly was, 
would not allow her to brook the restraint of rest ; but caused 
her, feverish with the excitement of expectation and impatient 
to find the great hope of her heart realized, to yield herself with- 
out restraint to the impulse of present and strongly dominant 
feelings. 

Page 234. 
" in some respects, the greater worthiness of Magdalene." 
" As our Lord's expressions are usually addressed to a cer- 



APPENDIX. 397 

tain state of heart, and calculated to meet the thoughts in the 
person addressed, we may, perhaps, understand them by consi- 
dering the state of Mary Magdalene's mind at this time, and 
what it was our Lord might have intended to meet, to correct, 
enlighten, elevate, and support. She seemed to surpass all in 
depth, and earnestness of sacred affection, as to the Holy One 
of G-od, the Divine Prophet Whom GrOD had sent, and Whoin 
G-OD was with ; but the very anxiety which proved the great- 
ness of her love, betrayed also some feeliug of weakness from 
an inadequate sense of our Lord's spiritual nature and Grod- 
head ; it was adoration, indeed, of the Son of Man, high and 
pure ; but even that adoration had yet to be heightened and 
purified to the Son of Man, united for ever with the Godhead ; 
not the Word of GrOD only, but the Word with GrOD, and the 
"Word which was GrOD. The weeping and the expressions of 
distress she now made use of, were only to be repressed by 
raising her mind to the Lord in heaven : she had now to come 
to the mind of S. Paul, when he said, 'Henceforth know we no 
man after the flesh ; yea, though we have known Christ after 
the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.' But 
when the Son of Man had ascended into heaven, setting our 
nature at the right hand of Gtod, and received gifts for men ; 
when He had sent the Comforter to be in their hearts ; when, 
as He said, He with Him would take up His abode with them, 
and manifest Himself to them ; then, indeed, S. Mary Mag- 
dalene might love that which her eyes now longed for in vain, — 
the Presence of Christ risen and glorified : for that spiritual 
Body ascended into Heaven will fill all time and space." — Wil- 
liams on the Besurrection, pp. 100, 101. 

Page 235. 

" and then He would." 

" The third place is Augustine, that Christ in these words 
had a further meaning; to wean her from all sensual and 
fleshly touching, and teach her a new and a true touch, truer 
than that she was about. This sense groweth out of Christ's 
reason : ' Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended,' as if till 
He was ascended, He would not be touched, and then He 
would. As much as to say, Care not to touch Me here, stand 



398 



APPENDIX. 



not upon it, touch Me not till I be ascended ; stay till then, 
and then do. That is the true touch, — that is, it will do you 
all the good. 

" And there is reason for this sense. For the touch of His 
Body she so much desired, that could last but forty days in all, 
while He in His Body were among them. And what should 
all now, and we since, have been the better ? He was to take 
her out a lesson, and to teach her another touch, that might 
serve for all to the world's end ; that might serve when the 
body and bodily touch were taken from us. 

" Cheist Himsele touched upon this point in the sixth 
chapter, at the sixty-second verse, when at Capernaum they 
stumbled at the speech of eating His flesh. ' What,' saith 
He, ' find you this strange, now ? How will you find it, then, 
when you shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was 
before ? ' How then ? And yet then you must eat, or else 
there is no life in you. 

" So it is a plain item to her, that there may be a sensual 
touching of Him here ; but that is not it, not the right, it 
avails little. It was her error this, she was all for the corporal 
presence, for the touch with the fingers. So were His disciples, 
all of them, too much addicted to it. Prom which they were 
now to be weaned, that if they had before known Cheist, or 
touched Him after the flesh, yet now from henceforth they were 
to do so no more, but learn a new touch ; to touch Him, being 
now ascended : such a touching there is, or else His reason holds 
not ; and best touching Him so, better far than this of hers she 
was so eager on. 

"Do but ask the Church of Eome : even with them it is not 
the bodily touch in the sacrament, that doth the good. Wicked 
men, very reprobates, have that touch, and remain reprobates 
as before. Nay, I will go farther : it is not that that toucheth 
Christ at all. Example, ' the multitude that thronged and 
thrust Him,' yet for all that as if none of them all had touched 
Him, He asks, Quis Me tetigit ? So that one may rudely thrust 
Him, and yet not touch Him though, not to any purpose so. 

" Cheist resolves the point in that very place. The flesh, 
the touching, the eating it, profits nothing. ' The words He 
spake were spirit ;' so the touching, the eating, to be spiritual. 



APPENDIX. 399 

And S. Thomas and Mary Magdalene, or whosoever touched 
Him here on earth, nisi fcelicius fide quam manu tetigissent, 
if they had not been more happy to touch Him with their faith 
than with their fingers' end, they had had no part in Him ; no 
good by it at all. It was found better with it to ' touch the 
hem of His garment,' than without it to touch any part of His 
body." — Bishop Andrewes, iii. 36. Lib. Aug. Cath. Theol. 

Page 238. 

" I have said, Te are gods, and all sons of the Most Highest." 

Agreeably with the language here used is that I find em- 
ployed in a valuable note by the author of the " Lyra Innocen- 
tiimi," commenting on our Lord's miracle of the change of 
water into wine. After the passage in the beautiful poem on 
Church Bites : 

" What is this silent might, 
Making our darkness light, 
New wine our waters, heavenly Blood our wine ? 
Cueist, with His Mother dear, 
And all His saints, is here, 
And where they dwell is heaven, and what they touch divine ;" 

he says, " The change of water into wine was believed by the 
ancients to typify that change which S. Paul in particular so 
earnestly dwells on : ' Old things are passed away ; behold all 
things are become new.'' And S. John, ' He that sitteth on the 
throne saith, Behold I make all things new? Accordingly S. 
Cyprian applies this first miracle to the admission of the Gren- 
tiles into the Church. (Ep. 63. ed. Pell.) And S. Augustine 
to the evangelical interpretation of the Old Testament. (In 
Joan. Tract. 8.) And S. Cyril of Alexandria (in loc.) to the 
spirit superseding the letter. This then being the ' beginning 
of miracles,' a kind of pattern of the rest, showed how Christ's 
glory was to be revealed in the effects of His sacramental 
touch ; whether immediately, as when He touched the leper 
and healed him ; or through the hem of His garment ; or by 
saints, His living members, according to His promise, ' The 
works that I do shall ye do also ; and greater works than these 
shall ye do, because I go unto My Father.' Thus according to 



400 



APPENDIX. 



the Scriptures, the sacramental touch of the Church is the 
touch of Christ, and her system is < deifica discipline' a rule 
which in some sense, makes men gods, and the human divine ; 
and all this depends on the verity of the Incarnation, therefore 
His Mother is especially instrumental in it ; besides being, as 
nearest to Him, the most glorious instance of it. < The Mother 
of Jestjs is there, and both Jesus and His disciples are called: 
(He as the Bridegroom and Author of the whole mystery, they 
as ministers, servants, and instruments), to this mysterious 
1 Marriage' or Communion of Saints." — p. 275. 

Page 240. 
"in some mysterious way the offices of the Holt Spirit." 

On this subject the author thinks he may assist his readers 
to obtain some more accurate thoughts, if he quote the obser- 
vations of Dr. Moberly. 

" The mysterious question which here opens upon us it is 
impossible to fathom ; how, that is, the sacred local Presence, 
if I may venture to speak so, of the Second and Third Persons 
of the ever-blessed Trinity, are dependent, and how independent 
of one another. Suffice it to say, that the Lord Himsele, in 
the great discourse in S. John, exhibits but does not explain, 
the same difficulty ; for He says, not only that unless He de- 
parts, the Comforter will not come to the Church, but also that 
He will not leave them orphans, but will come Himsele to 
them ; and that, if any man love Him, the Father will love 
him, and the Father and Son will come to him, and make 
Their abode with him. 

" Thus much only (as has been indicated in the earlier part 
of this discourse) the Scriptures seem to unfold respecting these 
two sacred Presences ; that the Holt Ghost dwells in the hearts 
of separate baptized Christians, that Christ dwells in the 
Community of the Church ; that the bodies of Christians are, 
one by one, temples of the Holt Ghost, but that all together 
are the temple of Christ; that each Christian is a separate 
stone, instinct with the Holt Spirit, but that all together make 
up Christ's temple ; that where several have been duly gathered 
into the sacred name (not without the water and the renewing 
of the Holt Ghost), there is Christ in the midst of them." — 



APPENDIX. 401 

Moberly on the Sayings of the great Forty Days, pp. 83, 84, 
85. 1846. 

Page 257. 

"acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." 

Bishop Beveridge thus comments on this passage : 
" In every temple of the Lord it is necessary that there be 
likewise a priesthood, to offer sacrifices suitable to such a tem- 
ple. And so there is here. For the Apostle having said that 
the saints are a ' spiritual house ' or ' temple ' adds, that they 
are also ' an holy priesthood.' As they are ' the living stones' of 
which this temple is composed or consisteth, so they are like- 
wise all of the order of priesthood, ' an holy priesthood,' proper 
for such an house, where the most Holy GrOD resideth. This 
was first revealed in the Old Testament, where GrOD said, ' His 
people should be unto Him a kingdom of priests,' Exod. xix. 6, 
a kingdom wherein all the subjects are both kings and priests ; 
or, as S. Peter a few verses below expresses it, t a royal priest- 
hood,' ver. 9. And how they came to be so, we learn from S. 
John, saying, that ' Jesus Christ hath made us kings and 
priests unto GrOD and His Father,' Bev. i. 6 ; v. 10 ; as He 
gives His saints a kingdom, so He consecrates them all to be 
priests ; not such as were under the law, when the priesthood 
was confined to one family, and offered up only carnal sacri- 
fices ; but they are ' an holy priesthood,' ordained to ' offer up 
spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to GrOD by Jesus Christ.' " — 
Beveridge in D'Oyly and Mant, 1 Pet. ii. 5. 

Page 261. 
" they, His brethren." 

In the same manner, Cornelius a Lapide interprets this pas- 
sage. After giving other senses, he says, " But properly, be- 
cause they were Apostles ; for the Apostles were brethren, 
one with another. But Christ was an Apostle, i.e., an am- 
bassador sent into the world to preach the Grospel, in which 
He associated with Himsele Peter, John, and the rest as 
brethren." 

D D 



402 APPENDIX. 

To those to whom the remarkable words of Tertullian (De Ex- 
hort. Castitatis) may occur, in which he asks, " Are not we lay- 
men also priests ? since it is written, ' He hath made ns a 
kingdom also, and priests to GrOD and to His Father,' " and 
eludes from hence that where no Clergy is, the layman both 
offers (the sacrifice), and baptizes, and is a priest to himself 
alone, (Tertulliani Op. Caillau, Parisiis, 1844,) the words of 
Thorndike, (Principles of Christian Truth, Book I. c. xiv. § 12) 
may prove acceptable. 

"Neither doth a 'royal priesthood,' or 'a kingdom of 
priests ' signify that the high-priests were their kings ; but 
that they who came out of bondage should now make a king- 
dom themselves, to be governed by their own nation and laws, 
which laws should consist much in offering sacrifices to GrOD : 
and those sacrifices, though for the future special persons were 
to be appointed to offer them, yet in regard they were offered in 
the name and on the behalf of the people whose offerings they 
were, the body thereof are justly called priests ; as all Chris- 
tians, to whom S. Peter challengeth the effect of this promise, 
are styled by him ' a royal priesthood,' and by S. John, 'kings 
and priests ;' though nothing hinder them to have their priests, 
whose functions cannot be intermeddled with by those who are 
no priests without sacrilege." 

Much to the same effect, the Hon. and Rev. A. P. Perceval, 
in his letter to Dr. Arnold, 1842, says, " That which apparently 
actuates you is a jealousy, which may well be considered a godly 
jealousy, for the rights and influence of the laity ; under the 
force of which it is reasonable to expect that you will ask, Is it 
meant to exclude the people from this priesthood ? ~No more 
than it is meant to exclude the people from the kingdom. In 
their several stations, in their due order and subordination, 
they help to form both the priesthood and the kingdom, assist 
and join in many of the immediate acts of priestly service, e.g., 
by saying Amen at the giving of thanks (1 Cor. xiv. 16,) as they 
do by their consent and approval in all acts of kingly government. 
Moreover, I have here spoken only of the public worship of 

Gron : the ministering to Him in the assembly of the saints. In 
private devotions, and in that, without which all ordained ser- 
vices are valueless, as regards the individual, and which all out- 



APPENDIX. 403 

ward services, whether public or private, are designed to repre- 
sent, that which the Psalmist calls ' an offering of a free heart,' 
every man, under the Holy Spieit, must needs be a priest 
unto himself." 

It may be added that, as our Blessed Savioue has been ma- 
nifestly pleased, in drawing us nigh unto those sublime honours 
unto which He in our flesh hath exalted us, to bestow them 
upon us by an economy, and according to our necessities in this 
mundane condition of affairs, apportioning to particular bre- 
thren a ministerial, and to the great body of the members of 
His Church an assisting and assenting office ; so this is only a 
compliance with that necessity which the nature of temporal 
things imposes, — a necessity the existence of which is but of 
infinitely short duration, when compared with things eternal. 
And this restraint imposed upon the members of Cheist's 
Church, is no more than what we have contemplated in a 
very similar case, viz., that set forth in the fifteenth sermon, 
of the woman standing really gifted with the same privileges 
and consideration as the man in the kingdom of Cheist, and 
yet, for wise and obvious reasons, during her probation in 
its militant state here on earth subject to the man; the ex- 
ercise of her full privileges being delayed till she arrive at 
that more blessed estate, where there shall be no further need 
of " marrying and giving in marriage." Just so, then, with 
the great grace and gift of priesthood and royalty bestowed 
upon us. We must look, whether priests or laymen, to a 
very imperfect exercise of these exalted functions here on 
earth. The realization of the true and perfect consummation 
of that bliss which they are destined to bestow, must be looked 
for in the great day when we shall be raised to stand before the 
altar and throne of the Eternal Lamb our King, where we shall 
find ourselves no longer heirs but possessors, and when all the 
dignities, and all the powers, and all the blessings, gained and 
treasured up for His brethren in the flesh by our great High 
Priest and Heavenly King, will be as freely bestowed upon, 
so freely exercised by the priestly and royal race which, by His 
prevailing oblation, He hath lifted up into the eternal man- 
sions. 



D D 2 



404 



APPENDIX. 



Page 286. 
" The most essential instruments to its success." 

" Among the talents for the application of which women of 
the higher [the writer might have included every] class will 
be peculiarly accountable, there is one the importance of 
which they can scarcely rate too highly. This talent is 
influence. "We read of the greatest orator of antiquity, that 
the wisest plans which it had cost him years to frame, a wo- 
man could overturn in a single day ; and when one considers 
the variety of mischiefs which an ill-directed influence has been 
known to produce, one is led to reflect with the most sanguine 
hope on the beneficial effects to be expected from the same 
powerful force when exerted in its true direction. 

" The general state of civilized society depends more than 
those are aware, who are not accustomed to scrutinize into the 
springs of human action, on the prevailing sentiments and 
habits of women, and on the nature and degree of the estima- 
tion in which they are held. Even those who admit the power 
of female elegance on the manners of men, do not always 
attend to the influence of female principles on their character." 
— Mrs. H. More's Strictures on Female Education, vol. i. pp. 
1, 2. 

Page 288. 

"which women bring to its assistance and advancement." 

" "What was the reason that so many women were among the 
first converts to Christianity ? Because those pure and loving 
and self-denying doctrines, found a ready echo in woman's 
heart. It seems to be particularly a part of woman's mission 
to exhibit Christianity in its beauty and purity, and to dis- 
seminate it by example and culture. They have the greatest 
advantages afforded to them for the fulfilment of this mission, 
and are under the greatest obligations to fulfil it. Eor woman 
never would, and never could, have risen to her present station 
in the social system, had it not been for the dignity with which 
Christianity invested those qualities peculiarly her own. * * 
ISTo human wisdom could have discovered that pride is not 
strength ; nor self-opinion greatness of soul ; nor bravery sub- 



APPENDIX. 405 

limity ; nor glory, happiness ; and that our highest honour as 
creatures, is submission — as sinners, humility — as brethren, 
love. This revelation at once settled the condition of woman, 
by exalting her own peculiar qualities in the moral grade. It 
is true that ancient Greece and Rome showed in their institu- 
tions some respect for women, and some sense of their influ- 
ence, but how ? By striving to endow them with masculine 
virtues. Men honoured them with reference to themselves, 
and only as far as they resembled themselves, and forgot the 
gentleness, lowliness, and humility proper to their sex, as 
women; and consequently, as inferiors, they were despised. 
No ! Christianity brought to light the true value of women, by 
proclaiming the reign of love and unselfishness. * # It 
sheds its light no less on her sequestered path, than on man's 
public way ; and shows that they equally lead to Heaven — with 
this difference, that if his is the more honourable, hers is the 
more secure. Christianity once received, the condition of wo- 
men is ascertained, never to be altered; they, equally with 
man, are denizens of heaven ; they, equally with man, have re- 
ceived the spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, Abba, Father ! 
What a deep meaning is hidden in these words — peculiarly 
touching to women, since they proclaim her no longer the slave 
of men, but the servant of G-od. Can women be anything but 
Christians, when they hear the scornful thanksgiving of the 
Jew, that he was not born a woman ; when they read in the 
creed of Mahomet that their highest destiny in the next world 
(even if they enter it) is to minister to the passions of which 
they were the slaves in this ; when they think that in humane 
Greece and polished Home, woman was only honoured as she 
bore citizens to the Commonwealth, and as she could look with 
tearless eye on the slaughter of the husband or the son, whom 
G-od had given her to love and cherish. Let them turn to the 
pages of Scripture, and see the compassionate Jesus, consoling 
the sisters of Lazarus — addressing the daughters of Jerusalem 
— commending His mother to the loved disciple — and ask their 
own hearts whence they derive light, freedom, and privileges, 
not granted by scornful condescension, nor held by precarious 
tenure, but secured to them as a right, by the unerring fiat of 
the Son of G-od !" — Woman's Mission, pp. 144 to 147. 



406 



APPENDIX. 



This little work, which, in 1840, had reached its eighth 
edition, contains in it mnch that is highly instructive, with com- 
paratively little to condemn. It carries out in a very thoughtful 
spirit, the practical object aimed at in this discourse, the im- 
perative necessity which exists for a thorough reform in the edu- 
cation of women — for such a line to be pursued in her education 
as is consistent with the fact of the enormous influence which 
for good or evil she possesses. 

Page 288. 
" the liberal institutions which have advanced her." 

" Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country, wo- 
men always give the tone to morals. Whether slaves or free, 
they reign, because their empire is that of the affections. This 
influence, however, is more or less salutary, according to the 
degree of esteem in which they are held • they make men what 
they are. It seems as though nature had made man's intellect 
depend upon their dignity, as she has made his happiness depend 
upon their virtue. This, then, is the law of eternal justice, — 
man cannot degrade woman without himself falling into degra- 
dation ; he cannot elevate her without at the same time eleva- 
ting himself. Let us cast our eyes over the globe! Let us 
observe those two great divisions of the human race, the East 
and the West. Half the whole world remains in a state of in- 
anity, under the impression of a rude civilization ; the women 
there are slaves : the other advances in equalization and intelli- 
gence ; the women there are free and honoured. 

"If we wish then to know the political and moral condition 
of a state, we must ask what rank women hold in it. Their 
influence embraces the whole of life. A wife — a mother — two 
magical words, comprising the sweetest sources of man's feli- 
city. Their's is the reign of beauty, of love, of reason. Always 
a reign! A man takes counsel with his wife; he obeys his 
mother ; he obeys her long after she has ceased to live, and the 
ideas which he has received from her become principles stronger 
even than his passions. 

" The reality of the power is not disputed, but it may be ob- 
jected that it is confined in its operation to the family circle : 
as if the aggregate of families did not constitute the nation ! 



APPENDIX. 407 

The man carries with him to the forum the notions which the 
woman has discussed with him by the domestic hearth. His 
strength there realizes what her gentle insinuations inspired. 
It is sometimes urged as matter of complaint that the business 
of women is confined to the domestic arrangements of the 
household ; and it is not recollected that from the household of 
every citizen issue forth the errors and prejudices which govern 
the world. 

" If then there be an incontestable fact it is the influence of 
women ; * * * (Aime Martin.) 

" The rescue of this degraded half of the human race was 
henceforth the ascertained will of the Almighty. But a long 
series of years was to elapse before this will worked out its 
issues. * * # The fantastic institution of chivalry which it is 
now the fashion to deride (how unjustly) * * bore the impress 
of heaven, faint and distorted indeed, but not to be mistaken ! 
Devotion to an ideal good, self-sacrifice — subjugation of sensual 
and selfish feelings ; wherever these principles are found, dis- 
guised, disfigured though they be, they are not of the earth — 
earthy. They, like the fabled amaranth, are plants which are 
not indigenous here below ! The seeds must come from above, 
from the source of all that is pure, of all that is good ! Of these 
principles the G-ospel was the remote source ; women were the 
disseminators. [' Shut up in their castellated towers, they civi- 
lized the warriors who despised their weakness, and rendered 
less barbarous the passions and prejudices which themselves 
shared.' 1 ] It was they who directed the savage passions and 
brute force of men to an unselfish aim, the defence of the weak, 
and added to courage the only virtue then recognized, huma- 
nity. [' Thus chivalry prepared the way for law, and civiliza- 
tion had its source in gallantry.' 2 ] * * * * 

" To the age of chivalry succeeded the revival of letters ; and 
(strauge to say) this revival was anything but advantageous to 
the cause of women : men found other paths to glory than the 
exercise of valour afforded, and paths into which women were 
forbidden to follow them. Into these newly discovered regions 
women were not allowed to penetrate, and men returned thence 
with real or affected contempt for their unintellectual compa- 

1 Aime Martin. 2 Ibid. 



408 



APPENDIX. 



nions, without having attained true wisdom enough to know 
how much they would gain by their enlightenment. 

" The advance of intelligence in men not being met by a cor- 
responding advance in women, the latter lost their equilibrium 
in the social balance. Honour, glory, were no longer attached 
to the smile of beauty. The dethroned sovereigns, from being 
imperious, became abject, and sought, by paltry arts, to perpe- 
tuate the empire which was no longer conceded as a right. In- 
fluence they still possessed, but an influence debased in its 
character, and changed in its mode of operation. Instead of 
being the objects of devotion of heart — fantastic, indeed, but 
high-minded — they became the mere playthings of the imagina- 
tion, or worse, the mere objects of sensual passion. Respect is 
the only sure foundation of influence. Women had ceased to 
be respected ; they therefore ceased to be beneficially influen- 
tial. That they retained another and a worse kind of influence, 
may be inferred from the spirit, as embodied in the literature 
of the period. Fiction no longer sought its heroes among the 
lofty in mind and pure in morals — its heroines in spotless vir- 
gins and faithful wives. The reckless voluptuary, the faithless 
and successful adultress — these were the noble beings whose 
deeds filled the pages which formed the delight of the wise and 
the fair. The ultimate issues of these grievous errors were 
most strikingly developed in the respective courts of Louis XIV. 
and Charles II., where they reached their climax. The vicious 
influence of which we have spoken was then at its height, and 
the degradation of women had brought on its inevitable conse- 
quence — the degradation of men. "With some few exceptions 
(such exceptions indeed prove rules) we trace this evil influence 
in the contempt of virtue, public and private ; in the base pas- 
sions, the narrow and selfish views peculiar to degraded women, 
and reflected on the equally degraded men whom such women 
could have power to charm." — Woman's Mission, pp. 41 — 48. 



Page 290. 
" how good and great men have owed # * to their mothers." 
Aime Martin says : — " This maternal influence exists every- 
where; in the cabin of the poor, as in the palace of the rich. 



APPENDIX. 409 

Everywhere it determines our sentiments, our opinions, and 
our tastes. ' The fate of a child,' said Napoleon, ' is always the 
work of his mother,' and this extraordinary man took pleasure 
in repeating that to his mother he owed his elevation. All 
history confirms this opinion. 

" L'histoire est la pour justifier ces paroles ; et sans nous ap- 
puyer des exemples si memorables de Charles IX. et de Henri 
TV., de l'eleve de Catherine de Medicis et de l'eleve de Jeanne 
d' Albert, Louis XIII. ne fut-il pas, comme sa mere, faible, 
ingrat, et malheureux, toujours revolt e et toujours soumis? 
JN"e reconnaissez-vous pas dans Louis XIV. les passions d'une 
femme Espagnole, ces galanteries tout a la fois sensuelles et 
romanesques, ces terreurs de devot, cet orgeuil de despote qui 
veut qu'on se prosterne devant le trone comme devant l'autel ? 
On a dit, et je le crois, que la femme qui donna le jour aux deux 
Corneille avait l'ame grande, 1' esprit eleve, les moeurs severes, 
qu'elle ressemblait a la mere des Gracques, que c'etaient deux 
femmes de meme etoffe. Au rebours, la mere du jeune Arouet, 
railleuse, spirituelle, coquette et galante, marqua de tous ces 
traits le genie de son fils ; elle anima ces cent ames de ce feu 
violent qui devait a la fois eclair er et consumer, produire tant de 
chefs d'oeuvre, et se deshonorer par tant de face'ties!" — Aime 
Martin in Woman's Mission, pp. 28, 29. 

Page 294. 

" To pretend to say what exact or definite course." 

" The chief end to be proposed, in cultivating the understand- 
ings of women, is to qualify them for the practical purposes of 
life. Their knowledge is not often like the learning of men, to 
be reproduced in some literary composition, nor ever in any 
learned profession ; but it is to come out in conduct. A lady 
studies, not that she may qualify herself to become an orator 
or a pleader, — not that she may learn to debate, but to act. She 
is to read the best books, not so much to enable her to talk of 
them, as to bring the improvement which they furnish to the 
rectification of her principles and the formation of her habits. 
The great uses of study are to enable her to regulate her own 
mind, and to be useful to others. 



410 



APPENDIX, 



" To woman, therefore, whatever be her rank, I would recom- 
mend a predominance of those more sober studies, which, not 
having display for their object, may make her wise without va- 
nity, happy without witnesses, and content without panegy- 
rists ; the exercise of which will not bring celebrity, but im- 
prove usefulness. She should pursue every kind of study which 
will teach her to elicit truth ; which will lead her to be intent 
upon realities ; will give precision to her ideas ; will make an 
exact mind ; every study which, instead of stimulating her sen- 
sibility, will chastise it ; which will give her definite notions ; 
will bring the imagination under dominion ; will lead her to 
think, to compare, to combine, to methodise : which will confer 
such a power of discrimination, that her judgment shall learn to 
reject what is dazzling if it be not solid ; and to prefer, not 
what is striking, or bright, or new, but what is just. That kind 
of knowledge which is rather fitted for home consumption than 
foreign exportation, is peculiarly adapted to women." — Mrs. 
H. More's Strictures on Female Education, vol. ii. pp. 1, 2, 3. 

Page 297. 
"until some plan be devised." 

Besides establishing some general and extensive institution 
adapted more immediately to the necessity, might not foun- 
dations such as the Clergy Orphan and the Adult Orphan, and 
other kindred societies of the Church of England, be brought 
to unite in giving facilities to certain of their Aleves to become 
respectable governesses of schools for the upper and middle 
classes ? If they were furnished with testimonials from the in- 
stitutions from which they severally have received their educa- 
tion, and otherwise put in possession of a sufficient motive for 
retaining connexion with them, we should have a guarantee to 
some considerable extent for their continuance in the principles 
which they have originally imbibed. 

The recently established training institution for nurses is so 
well adapted to answer some of the objects aimed at in this 
discourse, that it can hardly fail to meet that support and 
sympathy from the members of the Church which it so amply 
deserves, 



APPENDIX. 411 



Page 304. 
" stand foremost of all." 
The entire passage is as follows : — " I may not omit to ob- 
serve Mary Magdalene's place and precedence among the three. 
All the Fathers are careful to note it : that she standeth first of 
them, for it seemeth no good order. She had had seven devils in 
her, as we find, Mark xvi. verse 9. She had had the blemish to 
be called peccatrix, as one famous and notorious in that kind. 
The other were of honest report, and never so stained, yet is 
she named with them. "With them were much, but not only 
with them, but before them. With them : — and that is to 
show Christ's Resurrection, as well as His death, reacheth to 
sinners of both sexes ; and that, to sinners of note, no less than 
those that seem not to have greatly gone astray ; — but before 
them, too, and that is indeed to be noted, that she is the first 
in the list of women, and S. Peter in that of men. These two 
the two chief sinners, either of their sex. Tet they, the two, 
whose lots came first forth in sorte sanctorum, in partaking 
this news. And this to show that chief sinners, as these were, 
if they carry themselves as they did, shall be at no loss by their 
fall, shall not only be pardoned but honoured even as he was, 
like these, with stold primd, ' the first robe ' in all the ward- 
robe, and stand foremost of all. And it is not without a touch 
of the former reason, in that the sinner, after his recovery, for 
the most part seeketh GrOD more fervently, whereas they that 
have not greatly gone astray, are but even so so ; if warm, it is 
all. And with God it is a rule, plus valet hora favens quam 
mensis tepens, ' an hour of fervour more worth than a month of 
tepor.' Now such was Mary Magdalene, here and elsewhere 
vouchsafed therefore this degree of exaltation, to be ' of the 
first three ;' nay, to be the first of the three, that heard first of 
His rising ; yea, as in the ninth verse, that first saw Him risen 
from the dead." — Bishop Andrewes' Sermons, vol. ii. pp. 223, 
224. 



412 



APPENDIX. 



POSTSCRIPT. 



The Sarum office for the festival of S. Mary Magdalene 
identifies her with the sinner in the Collect, Epistle, and Gos- 
pel. The Epistle is Prov. xxxi. 10 — 31, which treats of holy 
women in wedlock, and was probably selected in conformity 
with the tradition that she was a rich widow. The Grospel is 
the same as in the Roman office, i.e. the washing of our Sa- 
yioue's feet by the woman who was a sinner. "When about 
the year 1536, King Henry VIII. set forth his injunctions to 
retrench the number of holy days, (Collier's Ecclesiastical His- 
tory, 531.) and when on King Edward the Sixth's accession, the 
saints' days were reduced to the red-letter days of the reformed 
Calendar, the festival of S.Mary Magdalene seemed altogether too 
important in dignity not to be retained. Her rank among the 
holy women had been so pre-eminent that with the exception of 
the mother of our Loed none stood so high ; and accordingly an- 
tiquity had so universally marked its view of her distinguished 
place in the Grospel narrative, calling her " the Apostle to the 
Apostles," that her festival had been long kept throughout East 
and West on the 22nd of July. And in England specially the 
Council of Oxford had ordered that it should be kept as a holiday 
of obligation. The festival was on these considerations retained 
by the compilers of the first Book of Common Prayer. "Wheatley 
however says, " Upon a stricter inquiry it appearing dubious to 
our reformers, as it doth still to many learned men, whether 
the woman mentioned in the Scripture that was appointed for 
the Grospel were Mary Magdalene or not ; they thought it more 
proper to discontinue the festival." 

Now this change took place at the compilation of the second 
book in 1551, under the influence of Bucer, Martyr, and other 
foreigners. And doubtless this must have been one of the 
changes from that book which the Parliament, who had declared 



APPENDIX. 413 

it to be set forth "by the aid of the Holt Ghost," affirmed to 
spring "out of curiosity rather than from any worthy cause." 
This festival however, though not restored to its original dig- 
nity as a red-letter day, was yet in the reign of King James, 
made one of the black-letter days or days " useful for the pre- 
servation of the memories" of the saints. 1 The special office was 
not restored, perhaps, because the rulers of the Church at that 
time were unwilling to add another topic of controversy to those 
already existing ; and though we have every reason to believe 
that they would have been the first to retain the celebration of 
the service had it never been omitted from the Prayer Book ; 
yet to have restored it in the face of the violent opposition of 
Puritanism, would only have been to have gained a compara- 
tively small victory at the probable expense of a great loss. 

The author may be allowed to express a modest hope that 
when the Church of England is enabled, in a period of greater 
union among her members than at present exists, to restore in 
her those things which are wanting, the question of the resto- 
ration of this festival to the place of dignity which the unpre- 
judiced judgment of the reformers originally assigned to it may 
receive that degree of attention which it deserves. That the 
edification to be derived from the contemplation of a character 
so broadly evangelical as that of S. Mary Magdalene should be 
lost to the members of our Church in the teaching conveyed in 
her cycle of Saints' Days is a circumstance very much to be re- 
gretted. Our Blessed Saviour declared of the act of Mary, 
sister of Lazarus, that in anointing Him against His burial she 
should be famous to the end of time wherever the Gospel is 
preached. Magdalene was great in faith even above Apostles 
and conveyed the tidings of His resurrection to them, which 
made the poet say 

" Her * * whose fair inheritance 
Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo, 
An active faith so highly did advance, 
That she once knew more than the Church did know, 
The resurrection." 

Now ought not some notice to be taken of such eminent actions as 

1 Proceedings of the Savoy Conference. 



414 APPENDIX. 

these among the commemorations of our Church. For are not 
the lessons afforded by such scriptural passages as these above- 
mentioned capable of imparting to us matter for our edification 
equal to that which is conveyed by the recorded actions of 
most of the Apostles ? The reason assigned for the non-ob- 
servance of the festival of $. Mary Magdalene is lest it should 
prejudge the question of her identity with the Penitent. Thus 
under the apprehension of confounding Mary Magdalene, and 
Mary sister of Lazarus, with one called " a woman" in the city, 
which was a sinner, and recording them in the Church as peni- 
tents, the fear in fact of misrepresenting two saintly characters 
of Scripture so far only as to make them the truest types of 
the spirit of the Gospel, holy penitents in fact (a small injury 
to them, supposing any injury at all to be involved in the 
matter) has induced the rulers of the Church, under the in- 
fluence of individuals external to her Communion, to withdraw 
a service which the whole "Western Church had in her wisdom 
ordained and had observed for centuries to the singular benefit 
of her members. 

This would seem to be the only serious objection to a revival 
of this festival in the Church of England ; an objection indeed 
which will be allowed to have little weight with any one who 
duly estimates the advantages to be gained to the interests of 
piety and religion by its restoration. 



LAUS SIT DEO. 



JOSEPH MASTERS, PRINTER, ALDERSGATE STREET, LONDON. 



Corrigenda. 

Page 25, dele 2 See Appendix. 

67, 1st line, for " Samuel" read " the same". 

100, 2nd line, after " territory" read " in which". 

103, 6th line from bottom, for " has" read " have". 

185, 2nd line from bottom, for " eve" read " evening 

337, 16th line, for " an opposite" read " that". 



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